Coming together to help bring the Healthy Waterways Strategy from co-design to co-delivery, 46 participants gathered at the Medway Golf Club on 23 October for the first Implementation Workshop for the Maribyrnong Catchment Program. Facilitated by Anna Kilborn, participants were invited to reconnect with each other and share their thoughts on what success of the Healthy Waterways Strategy in their Catchment area would look like, and how everyone could take ownership of its delivery.

Representatives from councils, community groups, water authorities, the Catchment Management Authority, EPA, VicRoads, DELWP, and Melbourne Water also explored monitoring and reporting frameworks, support for increased participation in citizen science, and barriers to achieving outcomes, including knowing where and why different delivery options might get stuck.

Social network mapping kicked off the implementation planning, giving participants the chance to identify where organisations are active, what projects they are working on, and forming the basis for identifying opportunities to collaborate.

The group also worked on the Maribyrnong catchment performance objective spreadsheets, selecting the performance objectives they are particularly interested in and adding detail to the spreadsheets about mechanisms or projects already in place.

Together these activities formed the start of a plan for implementing the strategy; identifying areas the group could work on collaboratively, how the group wants to work together on achieving the performance objectives, and what the priority actions were for the next six months.

A full report of the agenda and outcomes from the Workshop is available in the Document Library below, which includes links to the presentations and spreadsheets shared on the day.

We welcome any feedback, further thoughts, or contributions as we move into Co-delivering the Healthy Waterways Strategy -- get in touch at [email protected] or any of the numbers listed to the right of this page.