By Callum Ludwig
A Resilience Roundtable was held in Warburton on Thursday 15 August, with community members coming together at the Mechanics Hall to discuss some hopes for the township.
Inspired by the work of the Millgrove Residents’ Action Group’s efforts just down the highway, the group are looking engage with local residents to hear their concerns regarding emergency preparation.
Member of the Warburton Emergency Planning Group Kevin Bargar said a small group of 14 people got together at the meeting.
“The idea was just to introduce the community to the fact that the Warburton Emergency Planning Group has been given a grant from The Resilience Canopy to start a community-led resilience project in Warburton,” he said.
“It’s something the Warburton Emergency Planning Group has been wanting to do for a long time, but this methodology has come along and been something that looks really good to be able to do the kinds of things we wanted to do within the community.”
The group has been promoting a short six-question survey, which also asks if respondents would like to become actively involved with the efforts to improv Warburton’s resilience.
Mr Bargar said they’re hoping to get as many as a couple of hundred surveys completed by members of the community.
“What the surveys ask is what residents’ concerns are in regards to resilience in the community, how well do they think Warburton is currently situated as part of being able to respond to the issues, the disasters,” he said.
“What we want to do is make sure this isn’t just an emergency management plan, this is a community resilience plan and that goes in a lot of different directions, it talks about social awareness, social affordable housing, insurance access, cost of living pressures,”
“The survey will then bring in this information and that will give us a starting point where we’ll say these are the concerns the community has, then we’ll start to look at what kinds of projects or plans that we could put in place that would help address these concerns but it’s really about connecting this within the community.”
The Resilience Canopy provides $25,000 activation grants for community groups looking to apply the ‘Six-Step Future Ready Communities Engagement Model.’
To be eligible, community groups need to be in a ‘sponsored’ Local Government Area, have a Resilience Canopy-trained Practitioner (completed the organisation’s training’, have a method of accepting and managing the funds, be registered as a ‘Canopy Community’ and have a demonstrable commitment to the model.
The Resilience Canopy has a goal of 2000 resilient practitioners and 500 resilient communities by 2030.
Mr Bargar said while it’s not a pleasant topic to talk about, it’s vitally important that somebody in the community plans for emergencies.
“Emergency Management Victoria is strongly recommending that communities do their own planning as we really know what the things that are most important in our own community and you’re not going to get an emergency plan from a state agency that’s going to be a good fit for every community,” he said.
“The people in Warburton know where our challenges are and if we get those all pulled together and work on plans and processes that can address those ahead of time, everybody will be a lot better off in case something comes up.”
To complete the survey, visit surveymonkey.com/r/2MFKJNZ?.
