What EcoNetwork can bring to your organisation and your community.
- Affiliation with EcoNetwork brings with it a wider identification and acknowledgement of your local group, its concerns and issues needing to be addressed and supported by kindred groups and their respective communities.
- More specifically, affiliation can lead to Primary Stakeholder representation and a voice on those vital council and government advisory and consultative committees as in urban/town planning, development projects, estuary, marine park, and many other local and environmental issues.
- The more organisations affiliated, the greater the strength and community-wide influence that can be assembled and effectively asserted in representations to the appropriate authorities.
- EcoNetwork is in turn, affiliated to much larger State and National bodies with wider influence and clout; these include the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, the NSW Better Planning Network and the Climate Action Network Australia, and these can be called on for state-wide support.
- An added value of these affiliations to EcoNetwork and your organisation is that they can bring environmentally and legally informed advice, moral support, access to their policies, and their direct involvement if deemed to be appropriate.
- Without this combination of affiliations, our combined strength and influence is accordingly dissipated; this is why every affiliation is vital to maintain an effective representative presence through a united network currently comprising 16 community-wide organisations.
- Another outcome is that our respective communities will have an effective and consolidated representative network with a louder voice to help counter the excesses of the corporate sector, councils and governments.
- EcoNetwork is not an umbrella organisation; it is a voluntary network in which all affiliates are fully autonomous; we are also guided by a proactive policy of inclusiveness, engagement and cooperation.
- Our Executive Committee is also voluntary, conducts three general meetings annually including an Annual General Meeting; the Executive engages appropriate and prominent speakers and affiliated bodies may present their issues to gain greater awareness and wider community support.
Dr Bruce Pease Pres. 4984 7564; Nigel Dique Sec. 0402 024 819; Darrell Dawson Co-ordinator 0403 036 007.
EcoNetwork-Port Stephens Inc. PO Box 97 Nelson Bay 2315. EcoNetworkPS.org
May 2013.