29 January 2011

Who is it we really need to engage?

This truck was out at a community engagement function.
As with many organisations there is often discussion regarding the importance and role of Community engagement. Some members are passionate about the benefits while others cannot see beyond the spray of water from the hose. Many others talk about community engagement being 'core business' but for some that is where it stops - at the talk. It is good we are having these conversations, at least the level of consciousness around community engagement is increasing - the big challenge is to raise the level of consciousness into yet higher levels of activity!
 We have over 70 000 members with the clear majority of these being volunteers who all joined the NSW RFS for different reasons.
Ensuring the importance of the Bush Fire
 Survival Plan is understood
 For every person that simply states they 'joined to put the wet stuff on the hot stuff' there is another person complaining that our communities 'expect a fire truck to arrive in every drive way' during a fire. It is sometimes believed that the minimal expectation may be at least one fire truck per street!


So how do we take the next step forward? How do we keep raising that level of consciousness? How do we let our community members know that a fire truck may not always arrive in their street? How do we increase the understanding within the NSW RFS that community engagement compliments active fire fighting activities?

How do we get our often complex messages out in a way that the community can understand?


Let's detour a minute to that complex messaging and disect that a bit further. The message to the community is;


'The safest option is to leave early well before the fire impacts. However if you chose to stay and defend you must ensure you have a well prepared home, in a defendable space and be physically and emotionally capable. But you should never stay and defend on catastrophic days. On extreme weather days only consider staying if you are prepared to the highest level such as your home is specially designed, constructed or modified and situated to withstand a fire.'


This is only part of our message. I have not mentioned other critical facets such as the Fire Danger Ratings, Warning and Alerts or Neighbourhood Safer Places.


Put yourself in the shoes of a community member with no fire knowledge or background and there arises another myriad of questions such as;
• what is leave early - the day before, the morning of or when the fire is 50 kms away
• how do I know when the fire will impact
• what is a defendable space
• why do I need to be emotionally prepared
• how do I know my home is prepared to the highest level
By the way, the answers to these questions, and others, can be found in the recently launched NSW RFS Bush Fire Survival Plan

So back to those steps, to moving forward, to raising yet more the active support for community engagement within the NSW RFS and how do we engage our communities?

Surprisingly the answer is not simple - it rarely is when we are talking about behavioural change.

We need to engage our colleagues internally so they can REALLY understand the benefits to move them beyond talk and into real support or action. We need to increase their level of understanding - that effective engagement leads to engaged communties and can free them up to focus on the actual fire fighting during an incident.

Genuine and effective community engagement has benefits for both the members of the RFS and the communities in which we serve.

Our brigades share knowledge on fire safety
 with their communities
We need to understand that recognising the diversity of NSW is key to developing our capability to engage our communities. An ageing population, increasing cultural diversity, higher education rates and significant change in family structures; coupled with the ongoing, rapid rate of technological change and the impact weather conditions have on communities openness to fire safety messages, all present challenges and opportunities for those of us involved in community engagement in the NSW RFS.

Of equal importance is the need to recognise and utilise the diversity of our members who deliver community engagement.


In my next post I will take a look at internal engagement before we talk more about external engagement. Many of you are doing some brilliant work with engaging internally and sharing the skills and importance of community engagement. I am hoping our Road Show and Tell in a month will help share this work across the state.

You're input and ideas are very very welcome.


Engagement can be strengthened by the sound of many conversations.


Cheers from Tanyia  

 

20 January 2011

RFS News - showing our NSW RFS volunteers helping clean up after the QLD floods http://ping.fm/rhPJw

19 January 2011

There is so much to do but it is all GOOD!

Hello All,

Emma is working on the Conference and the toolkit
as well as other projects


 Well the Community Engagement Toolkit is well and truly underway with the draft being available soon. This toolkit will kind of be like an 'operations manual' for those undertaking community engagement activities with a pile of ideas on the how to's, tricks of the trade and resource hints and tips. If you are interested in reviewing the draft toolkit please email Community Engagement Team and you can be added to the review
team. We welcome as much feedback as possible because to quote Emma "it is a resource that you will be using so lets make sure it has everything covered."
 
The 2011 Community Engagement and Fire Awareness Conference venue has been booked and you will start to see more information on this over the coming month. Expressions of interest to present and exhibit will go out over the next week along with nominations for registrations to attend.   

Our Conference is about Community Engagement, Fire Awareness, Social media and working with our
communities. It will be held at Wollongong at the Novotel.
  
Those who nominated to be a part of the volunteer working group will be notified of their appointment in during the next fortnight and expressions of interest for staff to be a part of the committee will be released during the same time period.

We have drafted a grass fires fact sheet which will be released in the next couple of weeks. This has been a topic of interest of late and highly sought after. Thanks to  
everyone who has reviewed the draft versions, your feedback was great! Other fact sheets currently in draft format include 'Defending Your Property', 'Total Fire Bans', 'AIDER' and 'BBQ, Recreational and Cooking Fires'.

A Property Assessment Tool is currently being developed to
An example of 1 side of a key message card
 assist members with property inspections. If you have ANY examples we would love you to share them with us as Emma is intent on delivering what she refers to as the "SUPER" version.

Lyndle is working on the
key message cards, the Roadshow
and other projects
Lyndle has sent the key message cards, complete with RFS
Caribeena's, off to the printers and we will have these to hand out at our Roadshows (refer previous Blog post). The key message cards are playing card size, double sided, laminated and will go onto the caribeena so they can be clipped onto your belt, pants or display stand. We will also have posters of these that you can use at displays. The intention of these cards is to give you a tool that contains our main key messages in the one place, is easy to use and can be used when chatting to members of the public or other RFS members. They also relate to the content of our recently launched Bush Fire Survival Plan.
  
Stay and Defend icon
 
As part of the key message cards and the Bush Fire Survival Plan Lyndle and the team developed some icons to help with written communication - let us know what you think of them. The icons represent some of our key messages as a picture. There have been 8 developed so far. They can also be used as discussion starters with children. As an example you could ask a child what they think the 'Leave Early' icon means. What the picture represents to them?


Cheers all
From the NSW RFS
Community Engagement Team at HQ






10 January 2011

It is 2011 and the roadshow is back and we want YOU!

Hello All,
2011 is set to be exciting as we continue to develop tools and processes to help our members engage their communities.

Community Engagement Roadshow 2011- the roadshow is back and we want YOU!


We are planning the Community Engagement Roadshows that will be happening around the state this coming March. This year the theme is 'Roadshow and Tell', with the focus being about sharing lessons learned, knowledge and tools with each other.

This years Roadshow will again involve you sharing with us what is happening in your area.  We will share with you what we're working on and you will have the opportunity to share your knowledge and ideas. We are going to open the floor to local presenters, giving them the opportunity to share the great initiatives, resources, tools or programs that are being developed and used at a local level.

Some information you may want to share may include:
  • how you deliver your school presentations
  • what presentations you give to local community groups
  • how you run your street meetings
  • what tools, props and communication materials you have developed locally
  • ideas on what works in your community
  • how do you get your brigade involved in community engagement
  • local workshops you may run


The aim of the Roadshow and Tell is to:
  • encourage two way communication - It's all about talking and listening!
  • share ideas for Community Engagement activities with other areas around the state. This is about the RFS not 'reinventing the wheel'. It makes more sense for us to use what has already been developed than have each area create their own version of the same activity. It may also be beneficial to blend a couple of ideas from different areas - combine some great ideas - to improve the over all end product
  • provide more effective support and assistance. The more we learn about your needs at the local  level the easier for us to understand how we can best provide you with support
  • continually improving what we do and challenging ourselves to do better!

This theme came from suggestions at the Region North and Region East Community Engagement Forums in 2010. Both forums suggested that the more opportunities we provided for people to share information across the state the stronger Community Engagement would be through out our organisation - it really does make sense! 

So to make this years Roadshows just as good as last years WE NEED YOU! We are looking for presenters from around the state to present at their local Roadshow. We'd love to see demonstrations, unique displays, documents, tools and resources you've developed. We’d like to see anything that is working well for you in engaging with your communities! It may be serious, it may be humorous, it may a simple sharing of lessons learnt, it may be delivered as an informal chat or part of a lesson plan - the choices are almost endless!

If you have something you'd like to present at your local Roadshow, or if you know of a story from your area that you think would be great to share we'd like to hear about it! Please contact the Community Engagement Team on 8741 5417 or send an email to Community Engagement Team

In our next blog we will give you an update on our Conference preparations. Our May Conference will be held at the Novatel Wollongong this year instead of Newcastle. We are excited about the new venue and the conference opportunities it provides such as accommodation will only be spread across 2 motels with the majority being able to stay at the Novatel, improved parking and access and really good conference facilities - watch this space!

We thought we would share the teams favourite quote at the moment. It is
'Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.'
William Butler Yeats
 Have you any quotes that you like that are relevant to community engagement? If so we would love to hear them.


Cheers
Tanyia and the HQ Community Engagement Team