Wyndham has recently completed the first-year partnership evaluation of its current Learning Community Strategy (2018-2023) (LCS), using the Collective Impact Assessment Tool (CIAT). This software tool was first developed by neighbouring City of Melton’s Community Learning Board by Peter Blunden, Dr Shanti Wong and Ian Wong, with input from Dr Leone Wheeler. It has been adopted by other councils including ours, and by organisations such as hospitals. The underlying premise of Collective Impact is that no single organisation can create large-scale, lasting social change alone. This tool helps measure how and to what level our partners and ourselves are collectively achieving our strategy goals and designated actions. Our LCS Strategy has 18 different actions, some led by us, and others led by key partners where our team play a strong supporting role. In 2019, our actions ranged from events such as the Wyndham Learning Festival, community-wide projects focusing on transition and equity, and globally as we became a member of the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities. To achieve our actions, we collaborated with over 50 partners from both departments within Wyndham City Council to externally local community groups, regionally with learning networks, nationally with the ALCN and internationally with UNESCO. As such, measuring our collective impact and contribution was complex and brought challenges. To prepare for the assessment for the first year of the strategy, we first set up our three chosen assessment areas based on our objectives and goals in our LCS. These areas change depending on the focus of the strategy or learning project being considered. Then we checked we had listed all the partners involved across the year in any of our actions or the strategy more broadly. Next, we completed a subjective assessment of ourselves and all listed partners, ranking each partner as either high, medium or low in terms of their contribution as well as their participation on the three assessment areas. CIAT supported a clear analysis as to what level different partners contributed in 2019, and as to how they contributed to our different LCS objectives. For our first year, we ranked moderately in our three focus areas for 2019. Our focus on celebrating living and learning in Wyndham was highest due to the large partner contribution in our learning festival. These first CIAT results support us to see a clear baseline and help drive our planning for the upcoming years of the LCS. It also gives us potential to improve over time with this data being representative from only one year and allowing us scope to compare and reassess annually. Source