There are only a few days left to nominate for the AWE Excellence Awards 2023. If you know someone who is making a great contribution to emergency management and/or disaster resilience, we encourage you to nominate them for an AWE Excellence Award in one of the following categories:

• AWE Excellence Award – for women who are making an important contribution to emergency management and/or disaster resilience
• AWE Senior Excellence Award – for women aged 60 or over who have made a significant contribution to emergency management and/or disaster resilience
• AWE Rising Star Excellence Award – for women aged 16-30 who are making a valuable contribution to emergency management and/or disaster resilience
• AWE Mentor Excellence Award– for mentors who support and encourage women in the emergency management and/or disaster resilience sector in formal or informal mentoring arrangements

We have had several organisations and individuals contact us offering financial support for the AWE Excellence Awards. The inaugural awards are being supported by AWE, but for information on sponsorship opportunities for next year’s Awards, please contact us at [email protected]

AFAC23

This year’s AFAC23, ADRC 2023 and WAFA 2023 conferences were a great opportunity to hear from a vast range of people and organisation about research, practice and emerging trends, with topics ranging from disaster communications, inclusion, leadership to community resilience. A highlight for AWE was the powerful opening Keynote delivered by Nazir Afzal OBE who led the independent cultural review of the London Fire Brigade. Nazir reflected on the life changing experiences of hearing and believing victim survivors of racism, bullying and misogyny, and stated to emergency services organisations, ‘You have an obligation to keep your staff safe as well as keep your communities safe.’ AWE couldn’t agree more.

Further highlights were Resilience Lane, which we hope will be even bigger and better next year, the huge poster exhibition showcasing some amazing and innovative work underway, and WAFA’s fabulous diversity and leadership presentations.

A few AWE members were also lucky enough to attend the inaugural National Indigenous Disaster Resilience Summit the day before the conferences commenced. This was a momentous and important opportunity to hear from First Nations people about their experiences in disasters, and to respond to a call for action to ensure that resilience-building efforts draw on the strengths and wisdom of Indigenous peoples and their practices, and that Indigenous people are included in decision making around emergencies and disasters.

    

There were so many fabulous presentations at the conferences but we’re proudest of all the AWE members who presented including:

• Carla Bailey – First nations voice in disasters
• Elissa Berry – Impact though resilience knowledge
• Elly Bird – Lessons from the Northern Rivers
• Vicki Booth – People at risk in emergencies
• Leila Craig – Disability and disasters
• Courtney Cronin – Empowering children to prepare for disasters
• Anna Kennedy-Borissow – Creativity and recovery
• Ashleigh Brady – Reframing vulnerability through an intersectional lens
• Dr Claire Leppold – First nations recovery leadership
• Dr Kat Haynes – Insights from the 2022 floods
• Terese Howlett – A national approach to operational fitness
• Fiona Macken – Cross-agency medical responder program
• Melinda McDonald – Women in fire and emergency leadership
• Anne Pickles PSM – Networking for professional development
• Phoebe Quinn – Indigenous healing and disaster recovery
• Theresa Rockley-Hogan – Media, messaging, and new platforms
• A/Professor Mel Taylor – Insights from the 2022 floods
• Kelly Trugden – First nations voice in disasters
• Dr Michelle Villeneuve – Inclusive EM policy and practice
• A/Professor Marta Yebra – Technology and fire detection
• Celeste Young – Natural hazards systems-based risk

Look who we bumped into in the Exhibition Hall at AFAC23 – AWE’s good friends ACIM Solutions! We met ACIM Director Philippa Woolf over breakfast and visited Program Support Anita Crane (pictured) in the exhibition hall. We learned that ACIM is not only a registered training organisation but provides policy and procedure reviews, conducts independent debriefs and post incident processes following significant events. ACIM also generously sponsors the Philippa Woolf Scholarships. Great to see you there Philippa and Anita!

The AWE Community Recovery and Resilience in Australia through an Intersectional Gender Transformative Lens session was moderated by Ashleigh Brady, with panellists Erin Pelly, Nadia Brady and Jaimee Morgenbesser. Ashleigh reflects that throughout the panel conversation, we considered how we can better incorporate 

National Geohazards Monitoring Centre for New Zealand Tour

6-8pm Thursday 14 September
GNS Science, Avalon Campus
1 Fairway Drive, Avalan, Lower Hutt

If you’re working or visiting Melbourne come along and enjoy a Friday night drink to celebrate the beginning of Spring with some great emergency management and disaster resilience colleagues.

RSVP [email protected].

Join AWE for a spring breakfast at Thunderbird Café in Wellington. Drop in from 7:30am – have a coffee or stay for breakfast and connect with other women working in our sector!

Click here for details and bookings.

Come along to meet other people in the sector and chat about all things emergency management. The Reserve (formally Smith St Social) is located at 22 Smith St, Darwin near Festival Park.

RSVP [email protected]

Our next meeting will be held at 12pm AEST on 14 September 2023. Sally Bamber is a behavioural scientist with expertise in climate adaptation and disaster resilience in a policy and strategy context and will be coming along to this meeting. It’s a great opportunity for AWE members to learn from Sally about how they can have conversations about risk and climate change in their organisations.

Hope you can come along to this event. You can register for the session here.

If you would like to meet other AWE members in south west Queensland, we are currently organising an event in your area. Want to know more? Get in touch with Jenna Buckley at [email protected]  or send us an email at [email protected]. We would love to reach our many current and potential members in this part of the state and we are keen to hear how we can support you and build stronger connections within the sector.

As a result, we’ve scheduled the next networking drinks for 29 September 2023, again at The Reserve (formally Smith St Social), 22 Smith St, Darwin (near Festival Park). RSVP [email protected]

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AWE NZ

AWE NZ members got together in Canterbury for mid-winter drinks last month. Lots of great conversation, merriment and great new friendships were made!

Our HB CDEM Group women got together a couple of Fridays ago for a special lunch in the sun. The group had a good chat for an hour just for the sake of it! In between drinks, they agreed to host a meet-and-great event and organise drinks in the coming months. Watch this space!

AWE NZ has a breakfast coming up in Wellington – make sure you come along and say hi!

New disaster network: The DisasterWISE Network is a new group that is bringing together people with lived experience, research and lessons learned to help communities prepare, respond to and recover from disaster.

New to leadership? Check out this great article on stepping into leadership by Philippa Woolf of ACIM Solutions (yes, it’s our Philippa Woolf!)

The law, boards and gender equity: This article by Australia’s former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins AO GAICD reflects on the evolution of the law and Boards’ roles in driving change toward gender equity.

Disaster recovery free webinar: Elizabeth McNaughton, NZ disaster recovery expert, and Dr Lucy Easthope, the UK’s leading authority on recovering from disasters, will be engaging in an insightful discussion about disaster recovery, crisis leadership, and managing disruptive events in this free webinar on 11 September.

Bushfire resilience webinars: Check out Bushfire Resilience Inc’s 2023 webinar series on bushfire resilience, featuring a range of topics and experts from pets to preparing homes to grassfires.

EM mental health showcase: The ESF-hosted Mental Health Showcase, to be held on 4 October, is for staff and volunteers with an interest in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of the 139,000 people working across Victoria’s emergency management sector.

New preparedness campaign: The 30Days30WaysAUS vision is to inspire and empower individuals from all walks of life to build household and community preparedness, bolstering our resilience in a world impacted by a changing climate and a wide range of risks.

Women, ageism and leadership: this Harvard Business Review article outlines the research that has only just begun to investigate how age – youth, middle age and older age – is used to justify bias and discrimination specifically against women.

New Sex Discrimination Commissioner: Dr Anna Cody has commenced her role as Australia’s new Sex Discrimination Commissioner. Dr Cody has a particular commitment to understanding and acting on the lived experience of First Nations women and girls, as well as women and girls from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, as well as working to address family violence, issues faced by the LGBTI+ community and respect at work.

10 October         Australasian Women in Emergencies Day