The Food & Water for Life Program Working Grp met 18 Feb 2020 to determine its Terms of Reference, & get cracking on 24 actions.

The Food and Water for Life program is led by Dharriwaa Elders Group and Walgett Aboriginal Medical Service with DEG's UNSW Yuwaya Ngarra-li partners. It grew from projects developed in response to findings from Walgett's Food Forum.

It addresses a range of food and water security and environment concerns affecting the Walgett community through responding to immediate community needs while also bringing about sustainable systemic change.

The Walgett Food and Water for Life Working Group is established to:
• Understand, respond and act on existing and emerging food security and food environment challenges that the Walgett community currently faces.
• Oversee and give strategic direction to the development, implementation and evaluation of the activities and program of work delivered as part of the Food and Water for Life Program.
• Monitor the goals, outputs, activities and outcomes of the Program.

So far the Working Group includes staff from DEG, WAMS, Yuwaya Ngarra-li, The George Institute for Global Health, The NSW Ministry of Health. Reps from the Walgett LALC, Walgett Shire Council, Walgett Community College and Walgett IGA are being invited to join.

One of the items of business was to celebrate the giant zuccini recently harvested from the new water-efficient test garden beds - progress from the Food and Water for Life Program's project to drought-proof the WAMS Community Garden.

Other initiatives of the program include community mobilisation on food and water security, the Walgett Community Garden Network, the installation of chilled drinking water kiosks around the town, the development and installation of a reverse osmosis system to ensure safe drinking water, and providing input into Walgett Shire Council's Walgett Recycled Water Management Plan.