Fire To Flourish

Fire to Flourish is a five-year initiative focused on enabling communities to strengthen their resilience to disaster. Bushfires, floods and other disasters are happening more often in Australia, and with greater intensity. New and better ways to deal with disaster are needed - to protect people and property when disasters happen and to support community recovery and resilience building over the longer term. It is increasingly recognised that community-led responses are a critical part of disaster resilience. Responses need to be tailored to local people and place, and led by the community who are at the front line. But not much is currently known about how to achieve this in practice. Fire to Flourish aims to fill this gap. We are taking a community-led approach, developing and testing new tools and processes to support community-led action, and building a knowledge and evidence base to support community-led disaster resilience. Working with communities affected by the 2019/20 Australian bushfire season, Fire to Flourish aims to support communities to lead their own recovery, co-create foundations for long-term resilience and wellbeing, and disrupt cycles of entrenched disadvantage. Through strong partnerships with communities, agencies and institutions we will trial and scale innovations in community-led resilience, and together build an evidence base that can support communities to be better equipped to prepare for and respond to disaster.