The Wimmera Southern Mallee Regional Partnership is one of nine Partnerships across the state, established by the Victorian Government, recognising that local communities are in the best position to understand the challenges and opportunities faced by their region.
Our region in central western Victoria encompasses one of the world’s great grain growing areas. It is home to many small, vibrant communities and is served by the major regional centres of Horsham and Stawell. The region has relatively low levels of unemployment and provides residents and visitors with recreational and outdoor pursuits in vast and open landscapes.
Home to some of Victoria’s iconic natural attractions, including the Grampians National Park, the Wimmera River, major deserts, wetlands and lakes, our region includes:
- five municipalities (Hindmarsh Shire, Horsham Rural City, Northern Grampians Shire, West Wimmera Shire, Yarriambiack Shire )
- a Gross Regional Product of $2.52 billion
- a population of 48,400.
Since our establishment in 2016, the Wimmera Southern Mallee Regional Partnership has been actively consulting and engaging with thousands of people living and working in our community.
From 2019, our engagement has evolved and is now much more focused, with a small number of targeted deep-dive engagements. This follows on from the annual Regional Assemblies held from 2016 to 2018.
Our Partnership presents annually to Government on our region's priorities. However, in early 2019, the Partnership completed a Wimmera Southern Mallee Outcomes Roadmap (PDF 580.85 KB) 
- a summary of the key outcomes the Partnership is striving to achieve long term, as well as a description of the actions and key projects the Partnership is focussing on, and what success will look like for the region.
Over the past three years, a number of Partnership priorities have been supported in successive Budgets and, as a result, we have seen a number of Partnership-championed projects get off the ground.
However, the Partnership is about much more than winning funding at Budget time.
We have been active in bringing different groups and different levels and parts of Government together in our region, in getting people talking and listening, and in providing Governments with insight into how we can better design policy so it fits the needs and expectations of our communities.