Resilient Communities Project Evaluation

a drawing of many arms reaching across each other in different colours to represent diversity

Natural disasters can significantly disrupt the lives of children and young people, along with the broader community, leaving in their wake trauma and uncertainty.

Beyond emergency responses, building community capacity to support children and young people’s disaster recovery is critical for the sustainability of regional and rural communities, and young people’s climate adaptation. MacKillop Family Services (through MacKillop Seasons) has undertaken community capacity building to support children and young people’s disaster recovery from 2019-2024 in northern, southern and central NSW and East Gippsland in Victoria. The projects aimed to support individual, family, and community recovery and enhance future disaster preparedness by:

  • raising awareness about children and young people’s unique experiences, perspectives and agency
  • building the capacity of community networks, leaders and stakeholders to support recovery and future disaster preparedness, and
  • listening and responding to children and young people, about what they need.

Evaluation approach

The Centre for Children and Young People used a participatory and developmental evaluation methodology to understand the practices associated with community capacity building for children and young people’s disaster recovery (CCB-DR), and the conditions that enable and constrain practices. Ethics approval was obtained from Southern Cross University (number 2022/005).

Project Outputs

Research team

Led by Professor Anne Graham, the evaluation research was conducted by Dr Meaghan Vosz and Dr Catharine Simmons 

Project contact: anne.graham@scu.edu.au