Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes	Part A: What defines a highly resilient community?
40 minutes	Part B: Hazard resilience
35 minutes	Part C: Improving community resilience
05 minutes	Reflection

Part A: What defines a resilient community?

Step 1.

Present the video: From Risk to Resilience (youtube.com/watch?v=9ChAjcuCsXc&t=76s).

Step 2.

After you've watched the video, assign your student into groups of 3-4 and ask them to discuss and answer the following questions:

What are some of the features of resilient communities?
How does being resilient help a community prepare for and respond to a disaster such as a fire, flood, earthquake etc.?
Why is it essential to set up communities with a solid coping capacity to prepare for and bounce back from disasters?

Step 3.

Ask students to share their responses and begin to draft a resilient communities master mind map.

Part B: Hazard resilience

Step 1.

Ask your class if they believe communities have the capacity to become hazard resilient and what makes a community resilient? Gather their thoughts and conduct some class research on your local area.

Step 2.

As a class, investigate the capacity for disaster and resilience in your local area or an area close by using the Australian Disaster Resilience Index (adri.bnhcrc.com.au).

Click on the ‘Maps and Data’ link to search for your area and find out the ‘coping capacity’ and ‘adaptive capacity’ for your selected geographical area.

Click on the ‘Disaster resilience factors’ link to generate a report for your selected geographical area, showing the strengths and barriers to disaster resilience across the eight disaster resilience factors.
If you need additional support navigating the page, you can read through the user guides (adri.bnhcrc.com.au/#!/guides).

What are the disaster resilience strengths and barriers in your local area?
What can be done to improve the resilience and strengthen your local community?

Step 3.

Explain to students that highly resilient communities are supported by a range of factors which include cultural, social, economic, natural and built environments. Dealing with hazards and emergencies is not a matter for governments alone and there are ways we can improve our community resilience together.

Step 4.

Present the Resilience Framework retrieved from the Minderoo Resilient Communities Framework (page 10) and discuss the importance of the systems in detail and how they're applied to their own community. Read these as a class and let your students know they will be referring to these environments so that they can make suggestions to improve their own community.

Step 5.

Work through each built environment and add examples in the table (column 3) as a class.

Social	Social cohesion is prioritised and diversity is celebrated. Community leadership and governing mechanisms are clear, purposeful and trusted. Residents are empowered to create and participate in civic opportunities. Educational opportunities are varied, accessible and effective. Social infrastructure creates common ground between diverse residents and forms the basis of a larger sense of belonging and collective life.	What is an example of a strong social environment? In these communities, neighbours share resources and civic and public institutions provide reliable support and information. This sense of belonging is reinforced when residents are encouraged to participate in diverse civic and educational opportunities. These communities also ensure residents have an effective ability to influence decision-making and resource allocation, purposeful leadership helps to organise and give voice to the priorities of a community. Social infrastructure, such as libraries, parks or courtyards, are places where social connections are formed before a disaster strikes.
Cultural	Community members’ knowledge, histories, and identities are valued and celebrated. Culturally informed knowledge and practises are utilised before, during and after disaster. Residents develop and engage in diverse cultural activities.	What is an example of a strong cultural environment?
Health and Safety	All residents feel safe, secure and informed. Essential and emergency services actively plan for all phases of the disaster cycle, and prioritise residents’ and their own staff’s physical and mental wellbeing. Comprehensive, transparent and contextually appropriate law enforcement promotes safety and security for all community members.	What is an example of a strong healthy and safe environment?
Natural	Natural assets and ecosystems are understood, valued, invested in, and managed to maintain a wide array of services, safeguard culture and tradition, support local amenity, enhance biodiversity, and mitigate natural-hazard risk.	What is an example of a strong natural environment?
Built	Infrastructure promotes socioeconomic and ecological processes that enhance equity, wellbeing, and the functioning of natural assets and ecosystems. It is designed to withstand hazards, has appropriate redundancy, and is not over-reliant on a single asset.	What is an example of a strong built environment?
Economic	Economic activities do not entirely depend on one sector; the local and greater regional economy is thriving; there is sufficient investment in resilience-building; and there are minimal economic disparities between groups	What is an example of a strong economic environment?

The Minderoo Resilient Communities Framework document provides a holistic model to catalyse and influence disaster resilience strategy, policy, practice and evaluation across Australia and internationally. If you require additional support for yourself or your students, we recommend reading the doc and working through the answers as a class.

Part C: Improving community resilience

Step 1.

Now that your students have read and understood the environments that create a resilient community, ask them to pair up and choose one environment relevant to their community. This environment might be something their community already has or something they believe requires a little more attention and support.

Step 2.

Ask students to fill out the table and facilitate a class discussion on how we can increase resilience within our class, family and community.

Community or Town:	What aspects of your community are strong and resilient?	What kind of support does your community require in order to build disaster resilience?

Reflection

Ask student groups to consider: What do you think is one of the most important aspects of building a resilient community and what are some of the ways we can improve resilience, prevention, preparedness, response or recovery?

For example, "We can improve resilience by focusing on various aspects of our natural environment by..."

Differentiated learning

Extension

Ask students to investigate multiple environments within the table and suggest ways that their community could implement changes in order to create resilience against hazards.

Provisions for learning support

For small group work, mix students based on knowledge, skills and capabilities to ensure you have varying skill sets in the groups. Before allowing students to carry on in their groups and conc

Teacher reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching practice today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

Resilient Australia - Preparing Communities For Natural Disasters

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