About Us

Resilient Lismore is a registered charity and grassroots, community run organisation that formed during the 2017 floods in Lismore, NSW.

We are a volunteer-powered community recovery effort supporting Lismore residents rebuild their lives by connecting locals with volunteer help, information and services.

Getting resource to those who need them

A key focus of Resilient Lismore is collaborating with groups across the Northern Rivers region to ensure resources make it to those who need them.

Come visit our Volunteer Hub at 215 Keen St, Lismore where volunteers can sign up and be sent on jobs, and be equipped with supplies, safety tips and snacks.
Volunteers can also sign up online here and select jobs to attend via our Volunteer Local system.

Resilient Lismore has also established:

A community Hub providing free food, information and logging requests for help for locals.
A storehouse providing essential cleaning supplies and equipment for volunteers and building supplies for other community members.

The Resilient Lismore Facebook group, with over 33K members, gives the Lismore community access to information and offers of help.

If you want to help our team continue to provide these critical services to our community and continue the effort in the medium to long-term as the people rebuild their lives and livelihoods, please donate.

Donate Here

Your generous donations will help us continue our key charitable purposes and activities in the 2022 flood recovery effort.

The Northern Rivers Community Foundation has partnered with Resilient Lismore so individuals and organisations can give tax-deductible donations.

The Northern Rivers Community Foundation is an independent philanthropic foundation that connects people and communities to tackle challenging social and environmental problems in the Northern Rivers.

The charitable aims of Resilient Lismore are:

To support community-led disaster preparedness, recovery and resilience;
To help Lismore and surrounding communities develop their capacity to prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from crises and disasters;
To build community resilience to prevent the impact of poverty, disadvantage and suffering that results from natural disasters;
To mitigate the impacts of poverty, disadvantage and suffering that results from natural disasters through the mobilisation of spontaneous offers of help (volunteers, financial, material) in the recovery effort.

Governance

The committee of Resilient Lismore Incorporated is:

The Committee is:

Chair: Anne Meagher (joined June 2023)
Secretary: Fiona Allison (joined 2022)
Treasurer: Ross Davies (joined 2022)
Members: Fiona Berry (joined June 2023), Naomi Shine (nee Tarrant, joined 2017), Keiran Kevans (joined August 2023)

The long-running previous chair, Elly Bird, stepped down from the committee in 2022 to lead Resilient Lismore as its Executive Director.

Our History

On 31 March 2017, Lismore was the final destination for tropical cyclone Debbie. Immediately after the flood, the Lismore Helping Hands (LHH) Facebook group was established. The group rapidly grew to more than 7000 members within five days and became the platform for the community to organically work together to begin the cleanup.

The founders of the group reached out to Lismore City Council (LCC) and the SES to see how volunteer efforts could be further coordinated. Council connected the Facebook group administrators with Gasfield Free Northern Rivers, a local grassroots activist network.

The group formed ‘The Hub’ at the Lismore Train Station. Located in the heart of the impacted area of the city, The Hub was easily accessible and quickly became the central point of contact for residents and businesses to receive help and links to other services.

In its 19 days of operation, LHH coordinated more than 1450 volunteers through The Hub to attend to almost 1000 jobs logged, including skilled volunteer tradespeople.

The LHH welfare team managed a systematic door knocking and outreach program, to reach people in the worst affected areas and provide them with information and assistance they may not otherwise have accessed.

LHH developed resources to refer people to key services, including accessing donations, food, and financial support. A free shuttle bus ran from The Hub to the Disaster Recovery Centre.

The Facebook group was a critical source of information for the community with administrators providing updated recovery information to group members, and it continues to be an important platform for the community to connect and support each other.

The team was recognised by NSW Government ‘Get Ready Community Award’ and Primary Healthcare Network ‘Community Choice Award’ for the work they did in 2017 and are now known as Resilient Lismore.