Welcome to Community Rivers

Community Rivers is community owned. We are an independent, newly formed, not-for-profit organisation serving the interest of the whole community. This progressive new organisation provides the high-level support and expertise required by local communities to improve the health of our rivers, creeks, wetlands, estuaries and bays.

The establishment of Community Rivers provides an independent avenue for local communities to achieve their goals, by offering a range of programs and activities that supplement those offered by government hosted programs.

Importantly, the establishment of Community Rivers ensures the goals of local communities always receive the highest priority.

Our Objectives

The objectives of Community Rivers are divided into 3 distinct categories. These categories demonstrate a natural progression through community education, active on-ground participation, to the empowerment of the Australian community in achieving positive change. This process is intrinsically embedded into the design of all Community Rivers programs, ensuring the highly-valued contributions made by community volunteers and partner organisations are supported most effectively. As expressed in our constitutional documents, we aim to:

Community Understanding

1. Educate the community about waterway health issues

2. Train the community to collect usable waterway health information

3. Teach the community how to interpret the information they have collected

Community Action

4. Use the information collected to identify the sources of, and reasons for, matters that impact upon waterway health

5. Facilitate community involvement in on-ground remedial action to counter negative or deleterious impacts on waterway health

6. Support the broader Waterwatch Australia network

Community Capacity Building

7. Support the involvement of community networks in natural resource management decision-making processes

As a not-for-profit community organisation, one of the fundamental principles of Community Rivers is to ensure that all programs and training are provided free to the community. This can only be achieved thanks to the generous support of our partner organisations.

Organisational Structure

Community Rivers is a not-for-profit environmental organisation, registered as a company limited by guarantee under Federal law.

Community Board

A Board of Directors has been established to preside over the strategic direction of the organisation. The Board is composed of community leaders that have demonstrated an active and on-going commitment to river health issues at a local level. The Board's community-based composition ensures that Community Rivers objectives remain independent from external pressures, and will always follow the interests of the local communities as priorities change progressively over time.

Advisory Council

An Advisory Council of experts from various fields has been established to provide strategic advice to the Board and the Community Rivers management team. Advisory Council members provide their specialist advice in-kind, and we are most appreciative of their generous contributions.

Membership

The Community Rivers membership is composed of 2 member classes - Financial members and Subscription members.

Financial members are actively involved in river health programs and have paid the $1 membership fee, entitling them to vote annually on issues that affect the organisation.

Subscription members include people from the broader Australian community that have registered to receive our free e-newsletters, so they can keep up-to-date with program developments, upcoming events, and most importantly, issues that affect their local rivers, creeks, wetlands, estuaries and bays.