CBH have visited regional towns for feedback on where they should allocate their community investment fund

CBH Group is doing this for the first time by meeting with growers and recording feedback on where their investments in the community should go.

2023 Growing Leaders Scholarship recipient Julie Freeman was one of the more than 150 people to attend the regional workshops, who prioritised attending the CBH workshop despite having conflicting events.

Ms Freeman said CBH had been very generous in Mullewa, where she farms, and she drove to the nearest workshop in Dongara to ensure the fund continued to deliver for grain growers going forward.

CBH had given multiple grassroot grants to the Mullewa Agricultural Society and Ms Freeman said she felt lucky that CBH had been a sponsor for the show each year.

"The other thing that I'm very much aware of is that CBH sponsors the Rural Edge Farm Safety workshop, which quite a lot of people from my community have attended - farm safety, of course, is a massive issue at the moment," Ms Freeman said.

With lowering regional populations, she said many organisations were on the edge of collapse.

"The burden on volunteers at the moment has actually got to a bit of a crisis point," she said.

"So many of our not for profit organisations in our small rural communities are being asked to do more with less people and less resources for the love of our communities, and the burnout is real."

Having travelled a bit of distance to the CBH workshop, she said while it was disturbing to hear so many people report the same problem, she was reassured it wasn't just her town that was struggling.

Instead, Ms Freeman said it appeared to be a wider Wheatbelt and regional problem.

"They are great organisations with good strong governance and they're financially sustainable, there's just not enough people to run them," Ms Freeman said.

"And that's literally that massive population drain that we've had over the past 20 years, the impact starting to hit home now."

"I don't know what the answer to that problem is, but hopefully the more we talk about it, the more likely we are to find some solutions.

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In the past 10 years, CBH has donated $14 million towards a range of different initiatives through its community investment fund - and in celebration of its 90 year anniversary - CBH manager of community relations Cassidy Bennett thought it was only fitting to undertake a strategic view of the fund to ensure CBH continues to support grain growing communities.

The CBH team went to seven different locations in the past few weeks to chat with growers about what their community needed.

Ms Bennett said she was grateful to everyone who took time to share their priorities and needs for their community, and she was looking forward to incorporating those into the next ten year plan for the CBH community investment fund.

"It's really important to understand from our communities and growers who live and work in our regions, what the priorities and needs are, and that they align with CBH," Ms Bennett said.

"Having thriving, vibrant, sustainable communities is absolutely critical for our growers, and it's critical for the co-op, and it's critical for our communities."

Ms Bennett said she was blown away by the amount of people who attended the workshops, and how many people reported CBH's fund had impacted them personally.

"We had someone stand up at the Newdegate workshop and say the money we donated to St. John Ambulance to buy defibrillators which was so important to their community," she said.

"I've received so many emails from people that came to the workshops just to say 'thank you so much for coming to listen to us, we really appreciated the opportunity'.

"It's been so heartwarming."

Ms Freeman said it was great talking to the community investment fund staff who were "really keen" to think creatively about how CBH could help with the volunteer burden problem and assist somehow.

"It was a good opportunity for people to raise a very real problem and, and then hopefully, some creative solutions might come out of that," she said.