Gardiner Foundation
/Agriculture Victoria

How might we deepen CALD workforce engagement across Gippsland’s agricultural communities?

Gippsland's agricultural industry runs on a workforce that is far more diverse than the systems built to support it. Filipino, Indian, Rohingya, Samoan, and Karen workers are woven into dairy, horticulture, and food processing across the region, yet their voices, their barriers, and their aspirations have rarely been central to planning.

The Gardiner Foundation in partnership with Agriculture Victoria set out to change that and engaged Tank to lead a community listening program that would go beyond surface-level consultation; one that would sit with CALD agricultural workers where they are, hear what draws them to this work, what makes them stay, and the barriers and difficulties faced.

We worked alongside The LOTE Agency, Agriculture Victoria and the Gardiner Foundation to design and deliver a multi-phase engagement program across the region. Our approach relational, building trust with community members, cultural connectors, and local services before a single insight was recorded. On-location sessions in Sale, Leongatha and Maffra brought together workers, community members, and inclusive employers through interviews, group conversations, and shared meals.

The engagement centred lived experience from the beginning, rather than applying a standard research lens to a diverse group of people, we adapted our methods to meet each community on their own terms, in person, online, in language where needed, and  in ways that honoured cultural safety and dignity.

What emerged was a rich picture of the barriers and enablers that shape CALD workforce participation in regional agriculture, insights that would directly inform onboarding tools, retention strategies, and the Gardiner Foundation's broader mission to strengthen the long term prosperity of the Victorian dairy industry and its communities.

The work also left something less tangible but equally important: strengthened relationships between our team, the Foundation, local services, and the communities themselves. 

Our work

Community Research
Stakeholder Research
Place-Based Ethnographic Engagement
Lived Experience Engagement