While Neighbourhood and Community Centres have been working tirelessly on the ground to support their communities throughout the floods; NCQ has been working to better resource and connect centres while advocating for sector-wide funding and recognition they deserve.
In the week following the flood events, NCQ:
- Launched a private, members-only Facebook group for centres to connect with each other, share resources and help each other respond to their community needs and interests.
- Collected, created and shared disaster-focused information and referral resources for community members, compiled by our disaster resilience team Natasha and Laurelle.
- Conducted a survey to help us understand Neighbourhood and Community Centre’s response to the flooding and their needs during this time. Alongside the online survey, two of our team members Geoff and Taylor phoned centres across 97 flood-affected LGAs to gather as much data as possible.
We have been using the survey information in ongoing weekly meetings with the government. These meetings are part of our advocacy work for flood recovery funding; to actively communicate to the Department and Ministers the critical role of Neighbourhood and Community Centres in disasters and the need for centres to be better resourced to support their communities in the coming months. We also reiterated our sector’s 2022-2023 State Budget asks, which if delivered by the government, would increase the resilience of the community in times of disaster.
NCQ are also working with our members and strategic partners to incorporate learnings from the flood recovery into the State-wide NCC Strategy for Disaster Resilience, to be launched in 2022.
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Published: 20 March, 2022