Kumbia DR FR working group with Red Earth and FRRR staff

A new report demonstrates that disaster resilience is built through relationships, local leadership and practical action over time. It also presents strong evidence that sustained, flexible preparedness funding can produce tangible community assets, stronger organisations and better links between communities and formal disaster systems.

These insights come from a report reflecting on the three-year Disaster Resilient: Future Ready (DR:FR) Burnett Inland program in Queensland, confirming it is a practical model for building preparedness and resilience in rural communities.

Designed and led by FRRR, DR:FR aimed to increase preparedness and strengthen resilience. Through the program, participating communities enhanced local knowledge and gained access to practical resources and opportunities to identify risks, make informed decisions and take collective action on agreed priorities. This enabled them to have greater capacity to endure, adapt and evolve positively when faced with the impacts of climate, disasters and other disruptions.

The DR:FR Burnett Inland program involved a combination of region-wide activities, alongside deep work in six partner communities.

Meg Price, FRRR’s Head of Rural Horizons, leads the organisation’s place-based and youth-focused programs, as well as its strategic work to create the conditions for remote, rural and regional communities to thrive on their own terms. She said that DR:FR Burnett Inland demonstrated that lasting resilience and preparedness are built through investment in local capability and stronger system-level connections.

“Preparedness is not just an emergency management task, investing in plans and equipment; it is about community development. Sustained investment in place-based approaches that prioritise local capability, trust, local leadership, social connection, governance capacity, communication and inclusion enable more informed participation in building resilience.

“Truly community-led disaster preparedness works when local leadership is properly supported, trusted, resourced and connected to local disaster systems. Then they can turn preparedness from an abstract concept into practical local action,” Ms Price explained.

The report also highlights that trusted local intermediaries are critical. After running DR:FR in two other states by contracting facilitators, in this iteration FRRR partnered with Red Earth Community Foundation as a local delivery partner.

“Having a locally embedded partner helped build trust, interpret local dynamics, maintain engagement and strengthen long-term regional capability. That investment and the learnings from working together mean that in future, they can act as a backbone for furthering disaster resilience and preparedness across the region.

“Another enhancement to the model was establishing a local Advisory Group, which brought together councils, emergency management agencies and community organisations to align projects with formal disaster arrangements and existing efforts. This helped avoid community action sitting outside the system and has built ongoing relationships between community and emergency management agencies.

“Communities in the Burnett Inland are now better positioned to continue building resilience by using tailored Resilience Roadmaps, maintaining local networks and working groups, and progressing identified community-led aspirations focused on preparedness, leadership, partnerships and social connection. We’re proud of that legacy,” Ms Price said.

Some of the other insights arising from the program include:

• Flexible, place-based funding matters. Communities were able to pursue what made sense locally, rather than being forced into a single solution. That flexibility produced tangible and diverse outcomes, and several projects are still being implemented.
• Regional initiatives added value beyond individual towns. Big Maps, youth engagement, Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness (P-CEP), governance training and regional leadership activities created shared learning and cross-catchment relationships, which is important because disasters do not follow LGA boundaries.
• Resilience investments should include capability, not just assets. Equipment, halls and kits are important, but so is training, governance support, auspicing, facilitation, leadership development and volunteer support.
• Inclusion is not optional. Preparedness programs should be designed from the beginning around people at higher risk, including older people, people with disability, carers, socially isolated residents, First Nations communities, CALD community members, young people and people with limited digital access.

The full Report and a range of resources can be accessed via the FRRR website.

The DR:FR Burnett Inland program was delivered by FRRR in partnership with Red Earth Community Foundation, thanks to support from Minderoo Foundation and the Australian Government’s Preparing Australian Communities Program – Local.

FRRR also welcomes the opportunity to implement this model in other regions. If you’d like to explore what that might look like, contact partnerships@frrr.org.au.

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