Building Adaptive Communities

Communities that are already marginalised in our society are worst affected by climate impacts like extreme heat, storms, bushfires and smoke as well as long term impacts like drought and food insecurity. In Melbourne we are already experiencing these impacts during our record-breaking summers, and this particularly affects older people, people with disabilities and chronic health issues, newly arrived refugees and other at-risk communities.

Community Service Organisations (CSOs) and local councils play a critical role in supporting these at-risk communities - and they also face their own climate risks and impacts, while simultaneously managing increasing demand.

This series of workshops is intended to help CSOs and councils to:

Build their own organisational capacity to cope with and adapt to climate impacts and risks
Support at-risk communities experiencing climate impacts
Articulate their support needs and contribute to regional adaptation planning processes and
thinking on government policy

Participants will learn - and will contribute their own insights - about:

Engaging your organisation’s leadership in managing climate impacts
Conducting a Climate Risk Audit of your organisation
Identifying and addressing impacts on the communities you work in
Choosing strategies to address organisational and community needs

This workshop is intended for workers/officers, managers and leaders in:

Disability Service providers
Community health and wellbeing organisations
Aged care
Drug and alcohol counselling services
Family, youth and children’s services
Community development
Neighbourhood houses and learning centres
Housing and homelessness services
Council workers
Any community-facing roles

These workshops build on each other and you will get the most out of them by attending all of them, however, it's not essential and you are welcome to register for the ones that suit you.

The workshops build on work already underway in the South East, including the recent Planning for Community Resilience in Dandenong workshops run by Jesuit Social Services in partnership with VCOSS and Climate Change Exchange. The workshops will not be the same but rather will build on them and move towards next steps. The first workshop will overlap significantly in the kind of material that will be covered. We think you will still gain new insights even if you participated in the PCRD workshops, however if you are short on time, this would be the one to skip!

Workshop Schedule

Workshop	Date	Time
1. Understanding climate change impacts (Note: if you have already done the Planning for Community Resilience in Dandenong workshops then you could use this as refresher - or you could skip it if you are short on time)	Tue 16 Mar	9:30-11:30am
2. Building the capacity of your organisation to manage climate change impacts Register for Workshop 2	Thu 18 Mar	9:30-11:30am
3. Supporting the community to manage climate change impacts Register for Workshop 3	Tue 30 Mar	9:30-11:30am

This workshop will be delivered by the Northern Alliance for Greenhouse Action (NAGA) with partners Enliven and the Victorian Council of Social Services (VCOSS) as part of a project funded by the Victorian Government and Melbourne's Climate Journey. Thanks also go to the City of Greater Dandenong, the Climate and Health Alliance and Jesuit Social Services' Centre for Just Places for their collaboration.
Register for Workshop 3