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1. Introduction
In 2010, the Hon. Neil Roberts MP, Minister for Police, Corrective Services and Emergency Services in Queensland emphasised “the importance of volunteers in disaster and emergency preparedness, response and recovery” (Queensland Government, 2010). Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) were, for the first time, eligible to apply for Natural Disaster Resilience Program (NDRP) funds. As the state peak body for volunteering in Queensland, this opportunity provided Volunteering Qld further impetus to develop and deliver a strategic and innovative programmatic response, aimed at building sustainable community resilience, drawing on the learnings and experience of over 30 years of work in the community and volunteer sector.
Volunteering Qld was successful in achieving NDRP financial support for all six community resilience building initiatives which collectively made up the “Step Up- Building Qld’s Resilience” programme; this is Australia’s largest community resilience building programme led by a NGOs. These projects were developed based on a range of best practice community capacity activities and were a natural extension of the resilience building work that Volunteering Qld has been engaged in for decades, but they also leveraged the learnings and expertise gained through Volunteering Qld’s Emergency Volunteering – Community Response to Extreme Weather (EV CREW) service, which has been in operation since before the North Brisbane area/Gap summer storms in 2008. Interestingly, out of the 70 project applications approved in the second round of grants and the 55 projects applications approved in the third round of funding, only a comparatively low number of applications by NGOs were successful.
This paper will describe some of the methodology and systems that support the qualitative work of Volunteering Qld’s Step Up programme and Emergency Volunteering EV CREW service and will provide an evidence-based look at the diverse range of roles that impact-driven NGOs, particularly not-for-profit and community/service organisations, can and should play in building sustainable community resilience in Australia. Furthermore, it will argue the case that an increase in recognition, support, funding and partnership opportunities for impact-driven NGO would translate to an increase in the number of locally initiated, locally driven and relevant resilience building initiatives which are, by nature and design, sustainable, scalable and transferable to other similar communities throughout Australia.
2. The Step Up programme
Volunteering Qld’s “Step Up” programme is a suit of...