I had the privilege to participate in the RBA™ South Africa summit recently. Mark Friedman who developed the RBA™ framework was in attendance along with RBA™ practitioners from around the world. The conference was inspirational and reflected the commitment to improving the wellbeing of communities, social change and hope. The RBA™ framework is a tool that supports positive change for communities and it became evident that when passionate people use this framework powerful change can happen.

Sharon Shea and Sheridan Waitai from New Zealand shared their story of commitment in working with government to implement RBA™ including the roll out of streamlined contracting with NGO’s. They shared the journey so far including the process of respectfully engaging their community to develop their community outcomes.

Michael McAfee from Policy Link and the “Promised Neighbourhoods” initiative spoke about his commitment to the children and young people living in poverty in 60 communities across the US. He maintains that RBA™ provides the discipline required to assist communities to work collectively and create positive change.

Karen Finn from RLG US shared how RBA was used to improve outcomes for children in the US. She shared how the infant mortality rates in Baltimore City and the school readiness rates in Maryland were improved using RBA™. These communities were able to identify the community outcome, use data to track progress and determine a coordinated approach to “turn the curve” and see an improvement in the wellbeing of children.

I shared my own story of using RBA™ at a program level and how it assisted our team to keep the families and children at the centre of our work. RBA™ helped us stay accountable, measure outcomes, track our progress and consider ways to work differently when the data and stories told us that the program could do better.

Lastly, it was humbling to witness the hope of the South African delegates, their desire to improve outcomes for the vulnerable people in their communities and their eagerness to learn about RBA™.

I have now returned to Australia with a fresh sense of enthusiasm for my work with RLG Australia and NSW Family Services (FamS). Our work is about making a difference for people – this has always been the motivation for our work and will remain our core goal.

To find out more about the presentations at the conference, you can go to the conference website: http://rba-africa.com.

Louisa McKay is the Operations Manager for NSW Family Services (FamS) and Manager of RLG Australia. Louisa sits on the Organising Committee of SIMNA NSW.

October 2014