It takes a village: how community transforms education

I started working at Darling Heights State School in about 2010. In about 2013, I began working to support vulnerable children and families – predominantly indigenous and our culturally diverse families. My role was to establish and encourage better relationships between the school and our families, supporting them where we could, connecting them to the community and to open up channels of engagement with education. It had a big impact in supporting the children to ensure that they were ready to learn.

Eventually, we started really looking into what our families wanted. It wasn’t surprising to hear that our mothers wanted to learn English. They were feeling isolated at home and now that children were learning in English and often their husbands were working or studying and their language skills evolving, Mum was getting left behind, so English was the main topic of interest.

Communication has been a challenge, Darling Heights has students from over 40 different cultures – so many languages, so we needed to be smart about how we communicated with one another. I would say that communication is one of the biggest issues when trying to support someone who has a need that you don’t know how to understand or fix.

Of course, communication is incredibly important for people who are trying to find employment to make their lives better and to become part of our community’s fabric. Everyone wants to be able to improve their family’s situation and working is a way to do this. It is important for any organisation, boss, or employment agency to ensure that they are effectively communicating with their participants to get it right.

In 2023, Community Hubs Australia made the decision to establish three Community Hubs in Toowoomba. It established one each at Darling Heights, Harlaxton and Newtown state schools. I opened Darling Heights and Newtown Hub and moved full time to Darling Heights in 2024, and the school is considered to be one of the best multicultural primary schools in Queensland.

We have about 41 different cultures within the school. It had been recognised by UNESCO as one of the most successful multicultural schools in the world, and our previous principal actually went to Paris to speak at conferences to talk about how that had come about. The school really started its multicultural journey off the back of the University of Southern Queensland.

Getting the hubs was a really big achievement for Toowoomba and an acknowledgment of our cultural diversity. There are 100 community hubs in Australia, predominantly on the Eastern Seaboard. They work through the local settlement organisation – in our case Multicultural Australia. So the role is funded by CHA, and we work very closely with MA, which promotes and support our community connections. One of the purposes of the school-based hub is to be a connector between home, school, and the community, so while we can’t solve all the issues that people are faced with, we try to have relationships within the community to whom we can refer our people.

Our school is supported by about 40 different community organisations. We have such an amazing community of support in Toowoomba – it is one of our strengths. Organisations work with us in a wide variety of ways. This might look like trauma, emergency, financial, medical support or it might look like family support in regard to furniture or food or helping kids be school ready. But support also comes through the running of programs where the community organisation comes into the school to run a program.

Working closely with organisations allows us to start supporting this child before coming to school; helps us to make an impact while the child is young and hopefully minimises the learning impact. To do this, we work with Queensland Health, also working closely with Uniting Care (which has the NDIS Early Childhood contract). Last year, we supported Uniting Care to produce videos that support early play opportunities that improve educational outcomes. This is what working together with our community looks like – working together for a better future.

We have such an amazing community of support in Toowoomba – it is one of our strengths

There are also other organisations that support us. The Women’s Shed, Aldi, Loaves and Fishes, and Toowoomba Grammar School, which supports our Homework Club, work in so many different ways to support our schools and we are so grateful.

We also run English programs that help people gain and understand citizenship. Many people come to class as much for the friendship and belonging as they do for the learning. People want to belong, they want to know how to say hello to their neighbour at the mailbox. The Community Hub builds these strengths in people and gives hope.

One of the most important facets of our success in English classes is our volunteer base. We have over 30 volunteers who come each week to work with our families. They laugh and chatter and build relationships. It is a beautiful thing to see the trust and friendship grow, and I am sure that our volunteers get as much out of the time they spend together as the participant. We are always looking for volunteers, so please reach out to us if you feel like doing something wonderful with your volunteer time – we would love to have you join us.

We could have people from any walk of life come to the community hub, but I think we still have a lot of work to do with getting out to our mainstream community. This diverse community that we have in Toowoomba has so much to offer – their food, their culture, their language. It’s beautiful. And when you actually have the opportunity to meet people from other cultures, and when you start to understand a little about where they’ve come from, it’s very hard not to be completely enraptured.

I am so proud to be a part of this school, our hub and amazing community. I’ve noticed the difference, and I think most of the community members who’ve come here have noticed a strong growth towards a stronger peace and harmony.

Author bio: Ricky Adams, Community Hub Coordinator at Newtown and Darling Heights State School. I work with Community Hubs Australia and our local community to support culturally diverse people integrate into our communities to develop social cohesion. Supporting women with young children to build support networks, life skills, improve their English, gain job skills and through these channels improve the lives of our children.

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