Joint Winner - Group Nomination
In light of the increasing number of natural disaster events occurring in Queensland over the past decade, the Sunshine Coast Council has developed the Sunshine Coast Get Ready Schools Program, aligning to the Queensland Government’s “Get Ready” campaign, aiming to place Queensland as Australia’s most resilient state.
Council’s Disaster Resilience Officer visits schools across the region with no charge to the school, and delivers interactive presentations, aiming to assist their learning, awareness and preparation for disasters and emergency events. Prior to each school booking council and the school tailor together the presentation/s to meet the schools learning needs. To ensure a consistent and wholistic approach, the core content of the in-class program has been designed in consultation with members from the Sunshine Coast Local Disaster Management Group. Since 2017, the Sunshine Coast’s Get Ready Schools Program has seen requests for school visits triple from schools across the region.
The Sunshine Coast Get Ready Schools program is multi-faceted including both in-class teaching components and an external whole of community engagement and education component. To expand the project for 2019, council added the ‘Get Ready Schools Competition’ to the program. All primary schools, both independent and government, were invited to submit a 30-60 second video on planning for natural hazards. Students worked with their school and local communities to research, develop a message, and produce and star in their own video. The key question being posed to the students is ‘how can we engage and inform an audience about the importance of having a disaster "What-IF" plan, that is relevant to them and our local community’. The winners of the competition became the face of council’s 2019 Get Ready media campaign.
To provide a continuity of messaging and to help reinforce the disaster preparedness message, in 2020 council is piloting the expansion of the program into secondary schools, aligning with the Year 11 and 12 Australian Curriculum for Unit 1 of Geography.
The program addresses the key strategies and ideas detailed in council’s Disaster Resilience Plan, and the Queensland and National Strategies for Disaster Resilience. The aim of the program is to provide students with an education experience which will equip them with knowledge and tools to provide meaningful assistance to their own families and communities in the planning and preparation for disasters and emergencies which affect our region. The program recognises young people have an important role in building a resilient region, reinforcing the objective of working together and highlighting that we all have a role to play.
