Community Grants recipients 2020

Each year we support our community groups and environment by helping make important projects possible through our community grants program. While we help to fund these projects, it’s our community groups who bring them to life – often with a team of passionate volunteers.

Sandringham Life Saving Club Inc

With safety the purpose of every local life-saving club, our grant helped the Sandringham team secure the extra equipment it needed to meet COVIDSafe requirements (and keep beachgoers safe) – including training patrollers.

Visit Sandringham Life Saving Club

Lighthouse Foundation

Our grant funding helped to finance a mandated fire sprinkler in a newly-built Lighthouse Foundation home – meaning it could open its doors to children and young people impacted by long-term neglect, abuse and homelessness, helping them to heal and thrive. 

Visit Lighthouse Foundation

Willum Warrain Aboriginal Association

A place of connection and belonging for Aboriginal people, this gathering place in Hastings received a grant to build a fenced billabong – adding to its existing wetlands and helping to heal country with a new home for local fish, insects and wildlife. 

Visit Willum Warrain Aboriginal Association

Chelsea Heights Community Centre 

A grant for the centre’s community garden means that local green thumbs are enjoying new raised garden beds that are more accessible and water efficient– making gardening easier for members with reduced ability.

Visit Chelsea Heights Community Centre

Chelsea Heights Community Centre members with local MP for Mordialloc, Tim Richardson.

Food for Change 

This Melbourne-born food charity grows its own fresh produce in Clayton with a team of volunteers, and donates it to local food relief organisations. Our grants funding helped it set up a second farm on the Mornington Peninsula and expand its program – meaning more produce to help more people. 

Visit Food for Change

Ripponlea Primary School

The school gardens at Ripponlea Primary School are now nourished with around 10,000 litres of stormwater each year, thanks to our grant that helped to fund a new storm water pit pump and pump controller – meaning less reliance on our precious drinking water supply. 

Visit Ripponlea Primary School

Baxter Fire Brigade

This local brigade used its community grant to purchase a new defibrillator – which may help to save the life of a community member during cardiac arrest. 

Visit Baxter Fire Brigade

Holy Trinity Anglican Kindergarten Hampton Incorporated 

Thanks to our grant that funded wicking garden beds and a water course, lucky kinder kids are learning about the water cycle, how plants absorb water through their roots and how to design a water course so that water isn’t wasted. 

Visit Holy Trinity Anglican Kindergarten Hampton Incorporated 

Bayles Primary School 

Produce to plate is on the curriculum menu at rural Bayles Regional Primary School. It’s part of the Grow4Growth program, where students learn to make healthy choices by planting, growing and harvesting fruit and vegetables – then cooking it and composting the scraps. It used our grant funding to help set up a newly built greenhouse and to expand the vegetable gardens and fruit trees needed for the program.s. 

Visit Bayles Primary School

Marine Mammal Foundation

Our community grant funding helped this scientific and educational not-for-profit to educate and engage the local community on the unique biodiversity found in Port Phillip Bay. Children have learnt about the management of Marine Protected Areas, experienced a Rockpool Ramble at Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary, conducted a microplastic litter survey and undertaken a beach clean around the Sanctuary. 

Visit Marine Mammal Foundation

Nepean Conservation Group 

The Group has begun habitat restoration at Jack Ritchie, Dana and Sinclair Bushland Reserves Blairgowrie. Funds were used to remove targeted weeds including Billardiera fusiformis Ehrharta erecta, Ehrharta longiflora, Polygala myrtifolia, Stenotaphrum secundatum, Rhamnus alaternus and Cenchrus clandestinus. Friends groups will monitor successful weed removal and undertake the preliminary follow up work.

Visit Nepean Conservation Group

Mornington Lifesaving Club 

Lifesaving is for everyone at this coastal club. It runs an All Access Nippers program that gives school groups and youth with a disability the opportunity to participate in beach and water activities. It used its community grant to purchase equipment for the program. 

Visit Mornington Lifesaving Club

See the 2019 Community Grant recipients
See the 2022 Community Grant recipients
See the 2023 Community Grant recipients

Easy English Community Grant information

South East Water has worked with accessible information specialists enliven to translate key information about our Community Grants into Easy English.

We recognise that our customers have diverse abilities and communication needs, and by providing inclusive communications about our grant program, all customers regardless of their circumstances will have access to information that is concise and easy to understand.

Our Easy English Community Grant information is available below.