BECAUSE IT IS NECESSARY: Recognising emergent community-led organisations as peers in disaster resilience

The Bushfire and Natural Hazards Research Centre, the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, and the community leaders are pleased to invite you to the launch of:

Because it is Necessary

Community Leaders’ Communique and Research Report

A group of community leaders from across New South Wales have spent three days workshopping their priorities for the NSW government to strengthen community-led disaster resilience. Please join us for the launch of their Community Leaders’ Communiqué, and the workshop Research Report and Briefing Paper.

The launch will be held at Hawkesbury’s Helping Hands. Hawkesbury’s Helping Hands provides disaster relief and response, in addition to its core work of food relief, community meals, and homelessness support. It has assisted many of the communities that were part of the community leaders’ workshop.

The community leaders came together from:

·                     The Cobargo Bushfire Resilience Centre,

·                     Eugowra Flood Recovery Committee,

·                     Hawkesbury’s Helping Hands,

·                     Macdonald Valley Association,

·                     Mountains Community Resource Network,

·                     Resilient Uki, and,

·                     Our Neighbourhood: Mullumbimby Community Resilience Team.

These distinct organisations exist to meet their community’s unmet needs and demands. They are a chance to foster a different way of working that would otherwise not exist, including surge capacity. Individually and collectively, they form an operational arm of the disaster resilience sector.

The community leaders seek a shift in their relationships with disaster management agencies and departments towards reciprocity. This is because the problem of community disaster resilience is a shared problem. Both parties need each other.