What is The Disaster Ready Together Project?
Recent disasters and the long, difficult journey to recover from them, have highlighted the importance of a strong community services sector. The DRT Project aims to collaborate with community sector organisations in Lismore, Kyogle and Richmond Valley LGAs to:
Identify strengths, capabilities and needs in disaster planning and risk reduction
Support organisations to build capacity to reduce their own disaster risk and those of their clients
Encourage collaboration between the community sector and the emergency management sector to improve disaster planning, procedures and systems.
The Disaster Ready Together Summit (DRT Summit) held on the 7 & 8 March 2024 in Lismore at Southern Cross University was a spectacular success.
Timed around the two-year anniversary of the 2022 disasters that impacted the Northern Rivers so heavily, the two-day event gave over 250 front-line disaster response and recovery workers and volunteers a chance to pause, refuel, share their knowledge and experiences, connect, and plan.
Most of the 60 presenters were local and included young people, people with different abilities, indigenous recovery workers, police, community volunteers, evacuation centre managers, mental health workers. They took their place beside national experts and shared their disaster experiences.
People travelled from across the Northern Rivers and further - from Bundaberg, Ipswich, Tenterfield, Goodooga, Coffs Harbour, Cooma, Eden, Sydney and Melbourne. All with the shared desire to work together to be better prepared for future disasters.
Hosted by Resilient Lismore, the DRT Summit showcased the undervalued role that communities and local community services play in disasters. It was particularly heartening to see so many government and emergency service managers at the Summit, listening and learning.
The Summit was the first of its kind to be held in a regional area and the first to focus so heavily on local and regional knowledge. The magnitude of the 2022 disasters, coupled with the cumulative impacts of fires and previous droughts and floods, has made the Northern Rivers a region to which others look for expertise and knowledge.
The lessons learnt in our region are unfortunately becoming everyone's lessons to learn.
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DRT Workshop - a huge leap forward for the community sector!
The 6 November 2023 Community Services Sector Workshop was very successful, with over 50 community services organisations, charities and government agencies attending. Services included indigenous, homeless, legal/financial, mixed, women’s, mental health and wellbeing, disability, aged care, early childhood. All three LGAs in the project’s footprint (Lismore, Kyogle and Richmond Valley) were well represented. The opportunity to network and share ideas across diverse service types and locations was a highlight for participants. The workshop answered loud and clear the questions: what do you need and how can the DRT Project help you to meet those needs? Project staff and partners are currently working through all the suggestions made and designing a 6 month project plan accordingly.
Find Quick Tips from the workshop here.
Disaster-related vulnerabilities in Kyogle, Lismore and Richmond Valley LGAs (2021 ABS Census)
Here you will find an A3 spreadsheet with colour-coded data on a range of vulnerabilities in 41 towns, villages and areas across the three shires of the DRT Project.
This invaluable resource can alert you to pockets of vulnerable populations that are higher than the NSW average. It can also alert you to communities that have multiple vulnerabilities. It can support you to make evidence-based planning and programme decisions; and can also be useful for funding applications.
Lessons Learnt Survey
In October-November 2023 the DRT Project designed, piloted and administered a 15 minute online survey to the organisations on its database.
The survey aimed to gather information about:
The impact of recent disasters on community sector organisations, their services, networks, staff and clients.
Lessons that community sector organisations have learned about their strengths and vulnerabilities regarding disaster risk reduction as a result of recent disasters.
What community sector organisations have implemented to reduce disaster risks for their organisations, their services, networks, staff and clients.
Community sector organisations’ perception of current levels of preparedness for future disasters.
Team DRT
Headed up by Elly Bird, Resilient Lismore’s Executive Director and Coordinated by Jenny Bird (no relation) the team includes experienced community development officers Ruth Harlow and Aliison Kelly.
The DRT team (L-R): Ruth Harlow, Project Officer, Elly Bird, Project Coordinator and RL Executive Director, Jenny Bird, Project Coordinator, Aliison Kelly, Project Officer.
Acknowledgements
Resilient Lismore’s Disaster Ready Together initiative is supported through the Community Sector Disaster Capability project – a disaster resilience and prepared project led by the NSW Council of Social Service with the LCSA and AbSec. Funded through the Disaster Risk Reduction Fund under the joint Australian Government – NSW Government National Partnership Agreement on Disaster Risk Reduction.