Learning and Insights from the Helping Regional Communities Prepare for Drought Initiative

Learning and Insights from the Helping Regional Communities Prepare for Drought Initiative

Between 2023 and 2025, FRRR and ARLF partnered to deliver the Future Drought Fund’s (FDF) Helping Regional Communities Prepare for Drought Initiative (HRCPDI), part of the Australian Government’s FDF Communities stream. Together, they delivered more than $29.6 million in support to enable accessible and tangible opportunities for agriculture-dependent remote, rural and regional communities to come together and strengthen social resilience, by focussing conversations and action towards how their community could be better prepared for drought.  

This involved delivering five elements to support communities to adapt to and prepare for the impacts of drought and enhance the public good in agriculture dependent communities.

• Community Impact Program (Community Impact Grants delivered by FRRR and Community Leadership Activities delivered by ARLF)

• Small Network Grants (delivered by FRRR)

• National Expertise Pool (delivered by FRRR)

• National Mentoring Program (delivered by ARLF)

• National Leaning Network (delivered by ARLF)

Nous Group worked with FRRR and ARLF to evaluate the impact of the HRCPDI across two and a half years. The evaluation sought to understand to what extent the Initiative enabled remote, rural and regional communities to prepare for future drought through strengthened social resilience, local capacity and capability building.

The aim of the evaluation was to assess the impact of the multi-pronged approach of the HRCPDI and to generate and share insights. We look forward to sharing with these lessons with you in this upcoming online webinar.  

 Thursday 4 December 2025 from 1.00pm to 2.00pm AEDT

 In this webinar FRRR, ARLF and Nous Group will

• share learnings, insights, and lessons from HRCPDI and the evaluation

• invite guest speakers who participated in HRCPDI to share their insights and

• host Q&A.

 We look forward to sharing our Impact Insights Report (from FRRR and ARLF), and the Evaluation Final Report (prepared by Nous Group), due to be released soon.

More information on the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Plan as well as findings from the Mid Term Evaluation Report (Oct 2024) can be found here

For more information on the continuing work of FRRR and ARLF in delivering the next phase, see Future Drought Fund’s Communities Program

 Next Steps:

• Register to attend a session by clicking ‘Get Tickets above. The meeting link will be sent to you upon registration.

• If you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact FRRR at futuredrought@frrr.org.au