The Backbone Team

The Backbone Team provides secretariat, advisory and support services to the Governance Table. It is a neutral convenor that facilitates the delivery of the deal by bringing together all stakeholders, coordinating their work on the delivery of the initiatives. One of its key functions is also to develop and deliver a tailored engagement strategy to ensure community members from across the Barkly region are able to participate in the development and implementation of the Deal.

Landscape of Epenarra: Artist Susie Peterson, Epenarra 2018

"This image embodies traditional ritual knowledge of the Wutunugurra community. It was created with the consent of the custodians of the community. Dealing with any part of the image of any purpose that has not been authorised by the cutodians is a serious breach of the customary laws of the Wutunugurra community."

Collective Impact and the Backbone Team

The Barkly Regional Deal adopts a collective impact approach. This approach recognises that solving complex social issues requires collaboration, engaging all stakeholders to work together to create relevant solutions and lasting impact for their community.

Collective impact is different from ‘isolated impact’, where a single organisation works to provide a solution to address a specific issue. Often, the complex challenges that a collective impact approach seeks to address do not have a single, clear solution. Rather, they have complex solutions that require input and knowledge from a range of stakeholders across different sectors like community members, service providers, government leaders, businesses, NGOs and anyone else committed to the community.

The Backbone Team supports the collective impact approach by working with stakeholders at every level and reporting back to the Governance Table to:

develop and progress the community’s vision of the Barkly Regional Deal,
set targets and track progress of initiatives,
collect, analyse and report evaluation data to support learning and improvement of the work
facilitate Working Groups where community members and other stakeholders can provide feedback and recommendations about certain aspects of the 28 initiatives,
ensure communities across the Barkly are engaged in the Barkly Regional Deal,
support communities to develop Community Plans.