The Grove Sports Club provided a meeting space (at no charge) for an evening of community discussion on the topic of resilience and local community response/ preparedness for climate-related emergencies.
Volunteering Queensland organised the Community Resilience Conversations to happen simultaneously all over SE QLD.
Lindsay Robertson organised the meeting held in Ferny Grove. She is a local from Ferny Grove who had volunteered to help after the QLD floods.
There was rich discussion in the meeting about what resilience is and how to prepare for it locally.
One feature of the discussion was a very high level of agreement on the limitations to resilience caused by:
[ul]lack of meeting venues readily accessible to the community in Upper Kedron and Ferny Grove and Keperra
insurance liability and the very high costs that are proving a very high or insurmountable barrier to community participation
the need for models of rebuilding based more on sustainability than re-establishing high growth
lack of local public transport using minibuses
high costs (because of the demands for insurance cover put on sporting clubs) for children to participate in sport and after-school activities resulting in things like boredom and obesity
excessively litigious nature of Australia now[/ul]
The potential for local radio (Radio YYY 87.6 FM ABC 612 SES radio transmission capability) was recognised.
Helen from Ferny Grove talked about the lack of places and activities to meet and get to know locals in the area driving people out to the city to socialise.
Dale Shuttleworth talked from his experience as ex-military about the importance of good leadership in times of emergency.
The work of the Transition Towns movement (locally Transition The Grove) met many of the aims that Volunteering Queensland is endeavouring to promote and Lindsay proposed to pass that on to Volunteering Queensland.
John Tennock from Transition The Grove provided examples from his experience with the State Emergency Services’ response to the recent floods and how people react in times of emergency. Knowing how your neighbours are faring and the relative inability of people affected by the disaster to seek and ask for help were particularly noticed. Also the importance of good leadership and radio facilities.
Anne from Transition The Grove identified community resilience as something that would be being successfully achieved when it was emerging in groups right across the community not just as something that a few groups (like Transition Towns Volunteering QLD or the SES) were responsible for.
High quality leadership emerged as an important ‘resource’ in emergency response. This needed to be balanced against a whole-community raised understanding of interconnectedness and individual preparedness to take initiative in responding to help each other and act resiliently.
All local individuals and groups for example were encouraged to take advantage of community resilience resources like the communication tools available freely through the Transition The Grove website to initiate and organise their own ‘resilience activities’. It does not require permission just a desire to start something locally for the benefit of the local community and then going ahead and doing it.
Chris Wright from Transition The Gap was present. He encouraged Volunteering Queensland through its Community Resilience Conversations program to pick up the list of community organisations in The Grove from Transition The Grove’s website and communicate directly with them about the importance of community resilience. In this way the conversation about resilience becomes multi-directional and multi-voice.
Jo from Arana Hills took great notes for the meeting which will be communicated back to Volunteering Queensland which will put together the stories from across SE QLD and feed them back to local communities so that the experience can be learned and shared. She is particularly interested in practical active responses to developing community resilience and sees this as a time when preparing for climate emergencies supplants other interests.
Watch the [url=http://www.transitionthegrove.org.au/index.php/events]Events calendar[/url] for what’s happening for any further activities by this group.
Local residents living in The Grove (Upper Kedron Ferny Grove Arana Hills Ferny Hills Keperra/Grovely) who [url=http://www.transitionthegrove.org.au/index.php/join]join Transition The Grove [/url]are encouraged to [url=http://www.transitionthegrove.org.au/index.php/add-event]add local Events [/url] directly to the Events calendar.