Extensive consultation and involvement from organisations, community groups, and individuals, has seen the WA Community Disaster Resilience Strategy launched, which focuses on working with communities throughout the State to boost their resilience to the effects of a natural disaster.
The Strategy supports a collaborative and community-led approach to disaster resilience, as utilising the broad range of locally-available skills and expertise enables a stronger and more effective emergency management across the PPRR spectrum.
The guiding principles in the Strategy have evolved from the key learnings and responses from both local and national communities to a disaster along with international research.
The Key Priority Areas of the strategy include:
- Broaden Emergency Management by increasing engagement with peak bodies and industry groups, creating more pathways to volunteers, and keeping communities informed about risk.
- Work Locally to Increase Preparedness with community planning for recovery and equipping more people with the skills and understanding to build resilience.
- Collaborate to Reduce Vulnerability through creating grassroots community processes for communication and building district support programs to help smaller communities.
- Heal People and Communities with support services to assist people to work through the recovery processes.
The release of the Community Disaster Resilience Strategy coincides with Round 5 of the National Disaster Risk Reduction (NDRR) competitive grant program, with an allocation of $1.5 million available in this round. Eligible organisations are encouraged to apply for an NDRR grant and showcase how the Community Disaster Resilience Strategy can be used to provide resilience-building efforts that align with their strategic plans.
