Community Grants 2025 recipients
Each year we support our community groups and environment by helping make important projects possible through our Community Grants program. While we help to fund these projects, it’s our community groups who bring them to life – often with a team of passionate volunteers.
4th Mordialloc Sea Scouts
Mordy Sea Scouts Sailing Safely
Sea Scouts Victoria provides adventurous programs for youth (aged 5-25), teaching life skills and encouraging community participation.
The Mordy Sea Scouts Sailing Safety project will purchase compliant life jackets, safety helmets and marine radios to meet the new Victorian safety standards. This will ensure young people can continue to enjoy water-based activities that foster valuable skills, confidence and appreciation for the waterways and environment
Australian Afghanistan Initiative
Empowering Afghan Hazara Women: A Community-based Culinary Initiative
Dandenong-based Australian Afghanistan Initiative provides support to people experiencing disadvantage in Australia and overseas, particularly Afghanistan. This includes engaging with young people, providing funds for education, creating partnerships with educational organisations and providing humanitarian assistance. Through its work the not-for-profit seeks to bring communities together and create common ground.
The ‘Empowering Afghan Hazara Women: A Community-based Culinary Initiative’ tackles the significant employment barriers encountered by Afghan Hazara women in the Dandenong and Casey areas.
Brighton Life Saving Club
Lifesaving training defibrillators
Brighton Life Saving Club provide a safe environment to learn water skills, have fun, and train members in water safety and rescue techniques.
The 8 training defibrillators will enhance the lifesaving skills of volunteers, providing realistic, hands-on experience in defibrillator use to ensure patrolling members are prepared for real-life cardiac emergencies, making the beach and community safer.
Christ Church Mission
Refurbishment for food relief
St Kilda’s volunteer-run Christ Church Mission provides support, material aid and socially inclusive activities to locals in need – including those who are disadvantaged, isolated or marginalised due family dysfunction, disability, mental illness or the long-term effects of drug and alcohol use.
The refurbishment for food relief project will expand Christ Church Mission’s existing food security services to support more vulnerable individuals and families who are struggling to put food on the table. The project involves purchasing new tables and upgrading kitchen equipment.
Visit Christ Church Mission
COOK4CALD
Summer Program
Youth-run COOK4CALD provides non-judgemental food aid every summer, as well as a safe space for young people to connect, cook and deliver food relief to the local community. What started as a one-off event to address food insecurity during the pandemic for culturally diverse families without access to food aid, has grown into a thriving not-for-profit organisation.
The summer program engages volunteers to prepare and deliver nutritious, culturally inclusive meals to more than 100 recipients in Melbourne’s south-east. At the same time, the program equips volunteers with leadership, teamwork, and problem-solving skills. Further funding will provide high-quality ingredients and kitchen equipment to enhance meal variety, efficiency and hygiene.
Visit COOK4CALD
Ferntree Gully Tennis Club
Game on for everyone: All abilities tennis
Ferntree Gully Tennis Club provides a fun, active and encouraging environment for community participation in sport.
The all-abilities tennis program makes tennis more inclusive for people with physical and/or intellectual disabilities. These people often face barriers to sport due to accessibility, communication challenges and lack of tailored coaching. By improving court access, offering specialised coaching, and teaching Auslan to coaches and volunteers, the program creates a more welcoming environment, builds confidence and promotes physical and mental wellbeing.
Flinders Pre-School Inc.
Children’s Water Wall
Flinders Pre-School provides a welcoming, inclusive environment for children to learn supported by their educators, families and community.
The water wall project will transform a disused water tank to create an interactive, sensory and environmentally educational fixture for outdoor water play. This will foster fine and gross motor skills, social skills, problem-solving, mathematics and scientific understanding.
Visit Flinders Pre-School
FoodFilled Incorporated
L Plater Volunteer Program
FoodFilled is a food rescue charity run by youth, positively impacting the environment and community by collecting leftover, excess or unsold food and taking it directly to charities in need.
FoodFilled’s L-Plater volunteer program gives learner drivers the opportunity to use their supervised 120-hours of learner driving to make a positive impact, rescuing surplus food from retailers and delivering it to local charities, while getting their hours up under the supervision of another volunteer.
Visit FoodFilled
Glen Huntly Village Traders Association Inc
The sustainability project
Glen Huntly Village Traders Association brings the local streets and businesses to life with events and projects that benefit the whole community.
The sustainability project aims to transform one of Glen Huntly Village’s laneways into a thriving food garden with fresh veggies, fruit and herbs. It will facilitate community connection and enhance sustainability by installing rainwater tanks in laneways to reduce mains water use, easing costs for traders. Further aims will improve water conservation, enhance the public spaces and drive support for rainwater tanks and gardens.
Visit Glen Huntly Village
Lighthouse Foundation
A sustainable garden project
Lighthouse Foundation provides support services for young people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness in Victoria.
The replacement irrigation watering system project will convert a barren outdoor yard space at its Keysborough therapeutic home into a water sustainable garden oasis where families can heal, connect and engage in outdoor fun. This will include installation of a 2500-litre water tank.
Visit Lighthouse Foundation
Mornington Community Garden
Replacement irrigation watering system
Mornington Community Garden is a green space where people from all backgrounds and abilities can get together to share and learn gardening skills.
This project will replace the irrigation system for the orchard, berry house and grape vines which are more than 20 years old. New piping, drip lines, timers and sensors will provide an efficient and environmentally supportive watering system and improve harvests and support the community connection of the garden.
Visit Mornington Community Garden
Mornington Community Information & Support Centre
Edible community garden
The Mornington Community Information & Support Centre runs a free community café that serves 1000 meals each week.
The project will establish an edible community garden with fresh herbs, edible flowers and fruit trees to support the café’s needs and upgrade the facilities with landscaping and provide umbrellas to shade people and plants.
Parkdale United Cricket Club
Ladies cricket equipment
The Parkdale United Cricket Club is a family club that fosters active and inclusive participation in cricket for junior and senior players of all ages, gender and ability.
This project will purchase appropriate safety equipment, such as cricket pads, gloves and helmets for the ladies’ team, many who are returning to sport after having children. This will replace ageing equipment and ensure the club can continue to support inclusivity.
Point Leo Surf Life Saving Club
Disability access
Point Leo Surf Life Saving Club (SLSC) provides beach patrol and rescue services, first aid and lifesaving training at Point Leo Surf Beach and surrounds. It is entirely run by volunteers.
The project will install a 272m² concrete egress to provide disability access, linking the car park, clubhouse, accessible showers, and elevated ramp to the beach. This will ensure a stable and safe pathway while improving safety and beach accessibility for all.
Sacred Heart Mission
Daily meals and social inclusion
Sacred Heart Mission supports people experiencing homelessness, deep disadvantage and social exclusion.
This project will ensure kitchen staff can keep up with the community need for nourishing meals by purchasing a commercial stick blender to allow for blending up to 300 litres at a time. This will improve the team’s ability to make large volumes of soups and sauces, providing clients with healthy meat-based and vegetarian meals.
Visit Sacred Heart Mission
Stonnington Toy Library
‘Stay and play’ sessions
The Stonnington Toy Library provides an extensive selection of toys, puzzles and activities to entertain babies, toddlers and children up to 8 years old with 2 locations: Malvern and Prahran.
The project will facilitate monthly ‘stay and play’ sessions at the Bangs Street playground in Prahran where children can engage in messy sensory play and parents can connect. These will build awareness of the toy library and promote the benefits of play as a valuable contributor to the health of children and the liveability of the local community.
Visit Stonnington Toy Library
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We All Eat Incorporated
Expanding food access
We All Eat is an independent, non-profit organisation that offers food parcels to individuals and families in need and expands food access for people facing hardship by increasing food distribution, covering transport for deliveries, and recruiting additional volunteers.
With requests for food support increasing dramatically, this project will fund food purchases, improve logistics and ensure parcels reach those in need efficiently.
Visit We All Eat
Willum Warrain Aboriginal Association
Water for our pun pun
Willum Warrain Aboriginal Association seeks to provide a safe, cultural space for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to gather on the Mornington Peninsula.
The water for our pun pun project will plumb and trench an existing 3000-litre tank to harvest rainwater and redirect it to a creek swale running directly into a pun pun (wetlands in Bunurong language) on its Koorie plant trail. This will save water which would otherwise be hosed into the pun pun in summer and at times of low rainfall to prevent the pun pun’s water level from dropping excessively and becoming stagnant. It’s estimated that rainfall should fill the tank 26 times each year.
Windana Drug and Alcohol Recovery Limited
Recycled water for recovery
Windana Drug and Alcohol Recovery operates a government-funded alcohol and drug residential rehabilitation facility in Maryknoll. The facility incorporates a kitchen and garden program that allows residents to build their skills in teams and contribute to the site’s day-to-day needs.
The recycled water for recovery project will support the garden program with the installation of a new pump and plumbing to reinstate the rainwater system and water tanks. This will improve water efficiency and reduce reliance on mains water use for irrigation.
