Staff profile: Fire to Flourish’s National Learning Network
National Learning Network Convenor, Kate Fawcett
Fire to Flourish has been creating the space for communities to lead their own recovery from fire and flood, with the support of a National Learning Network.
In 2022, National Learning Network Convenor, Kate Fawcett, has been inviting people with lived experience of fire to join the co-design team and prototype the network.
The participants come from the NSW community of Cobargo, the SA community of Kangaroo Island, and the Victorian communities of Flowerdale, Strathewen and Sarsfield. In these workshops, the participants bring a wealth of untapped knowledge and have the opportunity to share their stories and support each other.
In the workshops, there are also people from government, agencies and consultancies who have worked in recovery, such as the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) (previously Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP)), Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience (AIDR), Victorian Council of Social Services (VCOSS) and Emergency Management Victoria (EMV).
Kate explains, “We step through the same rituals in each workshop. The three rituals were: story; seeding change; and learning by doing."
We foregrounded story as our main source of sharing to develop understanding, build trust and connection. We then discussed what needs to change, in which system, to build resilience in the community."
“We brainstormed ideas together and then we started a prototyping phase called ‘Learning by doing’. Which is what we’re doing now. We’re planning infrastructure and governance models to support that activity.
"Hearing community voices has really been missing in the recovery system. The ritual structure in the workshops creates a safe space for people with lived experience so they knew what to expect. It’s a really sound, trauma-informed process.”
For Kate, these activities are not just theory in action. She is a survivor of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires who has her own lived experience of the trauma of extreme weather events. And she’s seen first-hand how the community-led approach empowers and connects communities, which prepares them well for any future challenges.
When the devastating fires swept through Victoria, Kate was living in Strathewen, 45 km north-east of Melbourne.
“We were pretty much wiped off the map. We were only a small community of 200 people. We lost 27 people, all of our infrastructure, and 80 out of 130 houses that were here before the event," says Kate.
We were highly impacted but we were also forgotten in the recovery process. Agencies were focussing on the bigger towns. That’s one of the drivers to why Strathewen started their own community-led recovery.”
Strathewen formed a thinking group from established community groups, which meant that people were already supported by strong leadership. The thinking group elected leaders and gave everyone a voice. And eventually, other fire-impacted towns like Mallacoota adopted this model.
For Kate, the model acknowledges and uses the skills that are already in the group in the community.
“I was a kindergarten teacher at the time, so we were able to start a facilitated playgroup and provide a supportive space for the children and caregivers who had been heavily impacted.”
The Resilient Communities Learning Network draws on the benefits of this community-led model.
“The Resilient Communities Network wants to build a movement of people working together to strengthen disaster resilience and climate adaptation for thriving futures,” says Kate.
We will be bringing together resources to facilitate knowledge sharing by community, agencies and researchers. We’re foregrounding the wisdom of First Nations people on how to care for Country. One of our values is deep listening and there is a lot to learn from First Nations people who have survived on this land for millennia.”
Fire to Flourish is providing the infrastructure with a website and a platform with discussion forums.
“The network will act as a repository of knowledge. This will be a dynamic space where information flows and where we listen to each other and learn from varying knowledges and experiences.”
There is a Facebook group called ‘Recover Connect’ that’s already helped people prepare for flooding when members directly share their wisdom and advice from recent experience.
Kate’s role started in 2021 and she has another year to set up a self-sustaining model for the network. With the advantage of strong community ownership, it looks like the network will achieve its goals. As Kate points out, “the model’s already working while we’re building it!”