What Is Community Resilience?

Tammy Jones from the NSW Tweed/Byron Red Cross region will be holding a workshop on Tuesday 7 June from 5.00 PM in the SDA Display Centre. This meeting is open to anyone wanting to find out more about how Red Cross helps communities recover after disasters, and is hosted by the local Red Cross Emergency Services Team.

Community Resilience Teams are emerging across many countries to start the process of grassroots recovery after disasters. Basically, they are networks of local people and services that seek to help their communities not only ‘bounce back’ in the face of adversity, but bounce forward.

Being facilitated by Red Cross, an independent and highly regarded international organisation, these teams bring together local people so that recovery is led by the community and not by external bureaucrats who may have limited or no understanding of the strengths and resources of the local people. It is about harnessing collective strengths so the recovery journey is meaningful for the community and builds stronger social cohesion.

Some examples of CRT’s in action include:

• holding public meetings to review how the community responded to a crisis and identify ways the emergency response could be improved;
• collecting on-the-ground feedback about the rebuilding of lost infrastructure and working with professionals to make sure rebuilding is appropriate to the community’s needs;
• exploring ways communications could be improved during an emergency to protect lives and property;
• improving ways different agencies work with Councils to better prepare the community for emergencies or disasters;
• giving a voice to the people who are still displaced or needing emergency accommodation and support;
• channelling grant funds direct to where they are most needed.

Planning for recovery after any emergency, whether it’s a single incident such as a house fire or whether it’s a community-wide disaster such as floods, depends on having strong linkages within the community. This in turn depends on making sure the community helps individuals grow their resilience capacity.

Several critical elements of resilience are knowing how to recover a sense of safety (physical and psychological), knowing you are part of something bigger and others have your back, sharing the vision for rebuilding the future as better than the past, and having support to work through the complex systems such as insurance and financial support. CRT’s provide the forum for the community itself to drive this process.

The Norfolk Island Red Cross Volunteers invite all members of our local emergency services as well as interested community members to join us for this workshop. And for those who would like to join our team, please complete the online application at https://volunteering.redcross.org.au/cw/en/job/498406/emergency-services-team-member-norfolk-island

To find out more about our local Red Cross Emergency Support Team please call Kate Lemerle (Team Convenor) on 52112 or email bushtucka@iinet.net.au