Dr Kate Brady is a disaster recovery expert (Australian Red Cross) and community resilience research fellow at the University of Melbourne, currently part of the research team for Natural Hazards Research Australia's Community-led recovery project.
She has been sharing her top disaster recovery resources for the year for her new blog, Project 22. Natural Hazards Research Australia’s Bethany Patch spoke to Dr Brady about the resources.
Bethany Patch: Where did you get the idea for Project 22?
Dr Kate Brady: While I was working on a Natural Hazards Research Australia-funded project about community recovery committees, I was talking to some people who were really involved in this sort of work but weren't aware of the magnificent effort put in by the committees, following the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, to publish the Lessons learned by community recovery committees of the 2009 Victorian bushfires (2011) report.
It made me both a bit sad and frustrated at how hard it can be to find information if you're new to disaster recovery and you're trying to figure out how not to re-invent the wheel. There are so many cool, helpful, practical things out there to deepen our knowledge of the impacts of disasters and how recovery can be better supported, but if you don't know to look for them you would probably never find them.
Also, I'm a shocking writer with terrible discipline so I thought something like this would be good practice for me.
BP: Why do you think this is an important resource for people recovering from a disaster?
KB: For Project 22, I've been trying to highlight awesome disaster recovery resources that I would have loved to know about when I started working in this area.
Back then, in 2009, I felt very overwhelmed by my lack of knowledge in the area and was trying desperately to find things that would help me get my head around what I needed to know but I had no real idea where to start and was so time poor that I never had the luxury of sitting down and searching for it.
If I had a list like this back then, I would have devoured it. I am basically writing something my younger self would have loved to have.
BP: How do you imagine people using Project 22?
KB: There's a lot of people out there who start in disaster recovery roles but never get any training or professional supervision and it would be amazing to think that someone might send them through the list, and that they would find resources there that help.
The funny thing about accessing resources is that we all do it in different ways. There are some people who might see the links to Bhiamie Williamson's work and do a deep dive. Others might pop on something like the Floodlines podcast on in the car if they have a big trip ahead of them. Maybe you know your disaster mental health knowledge isn't up to scratch and scrolling through the Phoenix Australia Disaster Mental Health Hub will help. And there are some people who prefer their professional development served with a beer on the couch – Treme's the one for that.
I would also like to think that there are people out there who are interested in disaster recovery, who might see the links to resources and think 'I might check that out'.
That said, this is just a little project that I work on in the evening (unfunded). I haven't even promoted it beyond posting it on LinkedIn. So, with my knowledge translation hat on, that's probably a big old fail!
BP: Is there anything else about putting Project 22 together that you’d like people to know?
KB: I think that just about everyone who works and volunteers in this sector knows about a bunch of cool stuff that's out there, which they assume everyone knows about, but it's so hard to be across everything.
This is just my list of projects, resources, podcasts, books, blogs and TV shows that I think are great. They won't be everyone's cup of tea but hopefully it will help a few people connect to things that help them in their work.
Access Project 22 at www.katebrady.com.au/project22.