ad

Community comes naturally

Community comes naturally

It hasn’t taken long for Artemis Pattichi to be embraced as a highly-valued member of our community.

While she has lived in Southbank for four years, it’s only been in the past year that she’s really become engaged in her new community.

In that short time, she has become an active leader in the Southbank Sustainability Group at Boyd and, more recently, she has taken on the roles of treasurer and marketing manager in the Southbank Residents’ Association (SRA).

“I was living in Southbank for three years up until this last year and I had no idea where to even start in terms of community,” she said.

“Once I found the sustainability group and then the SRA I was pleasantly surprised by the community feel and the great people who are active and passionate about Southbank.” Before moving to Melbourne in 2014, Artemis lived and worked in her native home of Cyprus and, prior to that, studied and worked in the United States.

She has forged an impressive career in digital marketing and communications that has seen her work on a number of major campaigns for some of the world’s largest brands both here in Australia and overseas.

Today, she is self-employed and runs two of her own businesses. The first, Digital With Heart, helps not-for-profits and ethical businesses with digital marketing training, while the other, Metamorphic Healing Melbourne, uses an energy healing technique to help rid people of stress, anger and trauma.

Combined with her newfound interest in her local community, she said she was enjoying using her professional experience to give back to others in any way possible.

“I have had a very good and successful career for the past 12 years and I was getting to the point where I felt like I wasn’t getting much out of it,” she said.

“I wasn’t waking up as motivated going to work in the morning so I thought I’d kind of close that for a while and take a year where I got more involved with the community.” Since discovering the SRA through her work with the sustainability group, she said she had enjoyed the opportunity to work with other like-minded locals to boost Southbank’s “green voice”.

As well as getting more involved in local issues, she said she had enjoyed getting to know locals and encouraging others in the community to do the same.

“Three years I would walk down the street and I wouldn’t see anyone I knew but now I walk down the street and I see familiar faces so it feels nice,” she said. “Southbank actually feels like a neighbourhood now and not this transient, busy suburb outside of the CBD.” “It’s hard to build that community and there is a need there.

I think people want to.

They often just don’t know where to start and I think things like the residents’ association and the sustainability group do a good job in bringing people together to start interacting.”

For more information visit southbankresidents.org and facebook.com/southbanksustainabilitygroup/

Join our Facebook Group
ad