We won a grant to support the community in flood recovery

Northern Rivers communities have been profoundly traumatised by the floods, on top of two difficult years of bushfires and COVID-19. With a high likelihood of serious rain for the coming 12 months, coupled with difficulties accessing mental health services and ongoing severe housing stress, there’s a high risk for people to be re-traumatised. Already many feel isolated, depressed and worn out.

Research shows that it is often not just the floods themselves but what comes afterwards that people find so difficult to deal with - and the same applies to our region. We have also experienced this in the many community events we have organised since the floods, with community members sharing how much they struggle and long for further social connection.

Thanks to the Northern Rivers Community Foundation (NRCF) we will be supporting flood affected communities to connect and recover together in a trauma-informed approach. We will aim to bring together community members affected by the 2022 floods to help them heal and transition towards future disaster resilience through 9 trauma-informed social events in 6 shires of the Northern Rivers.

Our goal is to help de-escalate stress, build social cohesion, and foster community resilience, which creates the necessary foundation to support the long-term health and well-being of our communities.

We hope to give community members increased social connections, as well as knowledge about trauma-informed practices and recovery/resilience-building activities. We will provide outlets for people to express their collective trauma and foster community connectedness and peer support networks to contribute to healing from trauma.

We will also support 30 community-led trauma-informed recovery and resilience-building activities through our mentoring program.

Keep an eye out for events starting in 2023, and please spread the word, to ensure those most vulnerable know about it.