Rivers and Ranges Community Leadership Program

Project Summary

Rivers and Ranges Community Leadership Program (RRCLP) Annual Program aims to develop leadership to build resilient, connected and thriving communities across the municipalities of Mitchell, Murrindindi, Nillumbik, Yarra Ranges and City of Whittlesea.

Background and Situation Context

In 2011, a feasibility study concluded that a community leadership program (CLP) in the region would contribute to building a strong foundation of regional leaders to build resilience in the face of adversity such as the 2009 Victorian Bushfires.

Observation by community leaders since 2009 has indicated that leaders emerging from this disaster were becoming increasingly fatigued, had little network support, shared few resources and learnings across the region, and would benefit from leadership skill development to ensure rebuild process could be sustained and that these leaders were not a lost resource to the community. There were many examples where the understanding of governance skills, emotional wellbeing training, strategic planning and succession planning would have contributed to greater community resilience.

The program

• Builds leadership skills, confidence and self-awareness
• Increases understanding of regional issues including resilience to disaster
• Provides access to experienced leader
• Increases participant’s ability to deal with complex community issues
• Builds lifelong leadership support to face adversity in the region

It places emphasis on building understanding of

• Emergency management processes and structures.
• The capacity communities have to plan for emergencies and subsequent recovery.
• Community driven risk assessment, planning, response, and recovery
• Lessons learnt from disaster for communities in the future.

Activities

The program commenced in 2014 and eleven participants from diverse backgrounds spent ten months working on their leadership goals, skill development, and building their regional networks. Implementing activities guided by local, regional, state and federal leaders including achieved the outcomes.

• Program days
• Field trips
• Study tours
• Retreats

Emergency Management Program activities included

• Community capacity building resilience, and asset based community planning
• Emergency Management Study tour incorporating health and wellbeing and arts
• Tour of State Control Centre
• Understanding the role of the Defence in emergency response
• Peri-urban issues around planning for grass fires

The RRCLP Interim Board and Program Manager provided support to individuals. Local Government, business, community organisations, and industry, education and health sector representatives provided in-kind support.

The project was in-progress at the time of publication.

RRCLP will take a number of years to reach all of its objectives as the organisation tracks the pathways of graduates and their work within their communities around emergency management and resilience building.

Early evaluations measure the progress towards achieving short-term outcomes. These include increased:

• Participant Community leadership skill development and confidence
• Development of regional sportive networks
• Participant ability to work collaboratively around shared community outcomes.
• Understanding of emergency management

Results

Outputs of the program have included

• Year Book outlining the program and graduate learnings
• Mid-Year evaluation report
• Final evaluation is in progress, which will include outcomes from participants, speakers, and stakeholders.

Beneficiaries of the program included

• Graduates
• Organisations who supported participants (community, not for profits and business)
• Organisations, business, and industry in the region including local government
• Communities in the region
• The region itself
• Emergency Management sector
• Victorian community

Graduates reported a significant increase in

• Leadership skills and confidence
• Networks – quality and quantity
• Usage of new networks to work on existing and new community projects
• Collaboration across the region between community groups
• Community leadership responsibility
• Strategic approaches to community development work
• New work opportunities
• Community leadership opportunities – especially in the area of emergency management and Board roles
• Invitation to speak – Emergency Management
• Support by Alumni network.

Organisations report increased

• Leadership capacity in graduates
• Benefit from graduates’ networks
• Investment into organisational activities or development of new initiatives
• Investment in community activities and new initiatives
• Confidence in graduates’ ability to drive change

Communities experienced

• New initiative and project development
• Benefits of increased linkages and shared resources around emergency management planning in particular
• Increased advocacy around importance of community leadership particularly in relation to Emergency Management

Next Steps

• Complete program review.
• Refine and improve for 2016 and subsequent programs.
• Track alumni and their work in building community resilience particularly in the area of emergency management.
• Build stronger collaboration with Emergency Management sector around community leadership and its role.
• Target Emergency Management personnel to be part of the program.

Reflection

RRCLP Annual Program is unique because it

• Is based on principles of community capacity and resilience building
• Focuses on the development of local leadership using local examples
• Creates long-term networks
• Examines Emergency Management in the context of community including health and wellbeing, economic development, politics, and the arts
• Supports each participant’s personal development and community work
• Is experiential

Factors that were unique/good practice

The following informed good practice

• Victorian Regional Community Leadership Program Secretariat
• Evaluation
• Quality improvement and sustainability and on the development of long term evaluation measuring community resilience

Challenges Faced and Solutions

1. How to increase the influence of participants:
   Graduates who have used their increased networks and capitalised on their influence have had greater impacts on community resilience activities. Our challenge is to work with participants to increase their spheres of influence, and their confidence and aptitude in using them to drive change in their community.
2. How to promote level of capacity of graduates:
   Graduates from the program are highly effective leaders. Personal capacity building around increased emotional resilience, higher collaborative ability, the development of solid support bases, and leadership maturity were well evidenced. Our challenge to engage other sectors such as the Emergency Management sector to recognise and want to work with our graduates to a higher degree. Graduates are key community change makers, have the ability to increase community resilience through mobilisation and will play key leadership roles in regional adversity and disaster events.
3. How can we leverage the most from our alumni for the region?
4. RRCLP have been contemplating that as our alumni continue to grow each year, how we can leverage the most from this in terms of building resilience
5. More targeted recruitment.
6. How can we hone our recruitment to target individuals with high levels of motivation to drive change in their communities?
7. Impact of evaluation poses a challenge.
   Models for evaluation will be researched and partnerships created to measure long-term effects of RRCLP on community resilience and ability to plan for respond to and recover from disaster.

Additional Project Details