Almost 12 months of community collaboration on better preparing South West communities for predicted increases in drought events will culminate at the CWA Hall in Bridgetown on 25 October for a final workshop.
Across a series of six workshops held in partnership with five Community Resource Centres throughout the region in 2024, South West NRM has been driving development of a Community Resilience Network.
The work comes on the back of a record-breaking dry season in 2023/24 leading to drastic feed shortages and concern for farmer welfare earlier this year, with a below-average September rainfall now creating angst around a repeat for 2024/25.
With increasing evidence of the social impacts of drought, South West NRM’s Community Resilience Network is being designed to:
- Increase community access to suitable support services;
- Share resources and learnings to develop partnerships across the region;
- Develop action plans that can be implemented to mitigate social impacts when drought hits.
South West NRM Sustainable Agriculture Manager and Project Coordinator Peter Clifton said guest speakers at each workshop had helped to ignite conversation among participants which provided greater clarity about the various social impacts different communities were experiencing and the gaps in services that could help.
“We’ve covered enormous ground in the topics explored from research insights on the social impacts of drought by the University of WA Centre for Social Impact to personal drought stories of suffering and survival to men’s health initiatives, community development tools and financial support services for farm businesses,” Mr Clifton said.
Expert Facilitator Andrew Huffer will guide and coordinate discussion at the final event with the aim of collating findings for delivery of a framework that could be rolled out and actioned by different communities in the future when events like drought were testing resilience.
To register your attendance, click the button below.
This project is supported by FRRR, through funding from the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund. It is one of five ‘Surviving the Dry’ projects throughout the South West.
