MADRA News - June 2025

A new phase for MADRA: Introducing MADRA on Standby!

Over the last twelve months, MADRA has undertaken extensive planning and consultation with the community about the best way to continue and to keep supporting our district’s recovery. With admin and project support winding down and a current committee of just four dedicated members (see details below), the committee must now match its future goals with its capacity going forward.

MADRA has established many strong connections with government entities and community organisations, providing great support and advocacy for the Mallacoota and District community, but our recovery journey is not yet complete. The committee strongly feels that MADRA still has important work to do and that the relationships and assets built over the last five years should be maintained for the community’s benefit.

MADRA on Standby is a proposal that will enable MADRA to operate with a small committee (the minimum requirement of four) meeting at least four times a year. The organisation will retain its name, legal structure as an incorporated association, ACNC registration, charity status and deductible gift recipient status. In case of future community-wide issues or emergencies, MADRA will be well placed to step up and resume work at a higher capacity. MADRA’s website will remain online, and the committee can still be reached via email at: madra.3892@gmail.com

We’ll provide updates as we progress into this new phase for the association.

MADRA Committee changes

With mixed feelings of joy and sadness, we announce that Carol Hopkins has stepped down from the MADRA Committee due to her new role as Executive Officer with the Gippsland Community Foundation. Congratulations, Carol! We are thrilled on Carol’s behalf, and we wish her success in her new position.

Carol's dedication, commitment and contributions to MADRA for more than three and a half years have been invaluable, and her leadership will be sorely missed. Carol joined the MADRA committee in August 2021. She was Secretary for one year and then became the Chair of MADRA in 2022, remaining in that role for almost three years – an incredible effort and contribution.

We are pleased to inform you that David Perry has joined the MADRA committee, ensuring we maintain our minimum requirement of four committee members. Phil Piper, previously Deputy Chair, is now serving as Chair of MADRA. We hope to announce additional committee members in the near future, so stay tuned!

Farewell to our Admin and Project Support officers

With the conclusion of bushfire recovery funding from the Shire on 30 June, unfortunately, we must bid farewell to Maggie Langdon and Christy Bryar. Both Maggie and Christy have provided extraordinary administrative and project support to MADRA and our community’s recovery.

Maggie, who consistently went above and beyond in support of MADRA and its goals, began working with the committee in December 2020 as a Community Recovery Support Officer, offering administration and communication support. Christy volunteered as a MADRA committee member for two years before becoming the Bushfire Recovery Project Support Officer in early 2025. Christy has been instrumental in catalysing and coordinating support for projects in the district. We sincerely appreciate their passion and hard work contributing to MADRA’s successes over many years and wish them both all the best for the future.

Community Forums

MADRA hosted a Community Forum in May, the first of a series of Forums building on the success of the Linkages Workshop held in July last year. It was an enjoyable night, well-supported by representatives of local organisations who were able to share updates about their group’s activities and plans and any challenges they face, while tapping into networks and resources within our community. Many thanks to those who attended and also to Jodie Willmer and Rob Nagy, Happy Changemakers, who did such a great job facilitating the forum, along with Carol Hopkins and David Appleton.  For any enquiries about the forums, please email: madra.3892@gmail.com

MADRA News Updates compilation

A little bit of MADRA history has been created! We’ve uploaded a new file to our website that contains more than 80 MADRA News updates that have been sent out to MADRA members over the past five years. We thought it might be useful to have them all together and in chronological order. This means you can go through them right from the beginning, when 12 people formed a Community-led Recovery Committee and (just to complicate things) a virus called COVID-19 began to affect our lives in ways we could never have imagined …

Here’s the link:  https://www.madrecovery.com/s/MADRA-News-Five-Years-of-Updates.pdf

Happy reading!

Thank you,

MADRA