The Third Space, Relieving Poverty & Disadvantage Through Participation Ltd.
The Third Space is a notforprofit organisation established to provide relief through direct personcentred participatory programs. The Third Space supports individuals, groups and communities through projects and programs that are led by people with lived experience. The Heartland Project is a grassroots community pilot project connecting LGBTIQA+ people seeking asylum in search of a home with LGBTIQA+ hosts and flatmates in Sydney s Inner West. Following on from the team s successful community engagement across Mardi Gras 2022, the team s focus was on securing funding to continue building their community footprint. In October 2022 the project was announced as a recipient of the Stronger Together Grants Program. With this funding, the livedexperience team planned to employ a parttime project officer to deliver necessary consistent support to meet project outcomes. Since 2020, the project has been largely volunteerrun. Starting in 2023 the livedexperience team received capacity building in leadership, human resources, workplace health and safety as well as employee management and supervision. Together they developed a range of policies and procedures to guide the successful employment and retention of their first ever paid staff member. Together, the team developed a position description, advertised, interviewed, and assessed candidates and recruited a livedexperience project officer to commence employment in August 2023. The Community Refugee Welcome Centre (CRWC) is actively supported by The Third Space through our participation on the Community Reference Committee. In 20222023, the goal was to build the capacities and leadership of emerging leaders from refugee and asylumseeking backgrounds through training and project work. The Third Space provided ongoing support to the Centre Coordinator, project workers, artists, and community members. This work over the last five years of The Third Space involvement has contributed to building a viable and sustainable communityled Centre that is safe and accessible for community members. The projects of the Centre aim to relieve poverty by providing opportunities for participation and employment. In 2022/23, we supported responsive community projects including leadership and capacity building with people seeking asylum and refugee groups including from Iranian, Afghan, Syrian and newlyarrived individuals. The Third Space worked on two key projects with the CRWC this year. The Refugee Leadership and Mentoring Project funded by the Inner West Council supported two emerging community workers to engage community members in activities and programs that built wellbeing and skills towards greater participation and employability.