Shared mission key to drought preparedness resilience, Bridgetown workshop told

After a record-breaking dry season, drought preparedness and resilience was firmly in the spotlight at the final South West NRM workshops on the issue. South West NRM have worked closely with the community this year in a series of workshops to plan ahead of drought seasons — with a mission for “preparedness”. It comes off back of a record-breaking dry season in the summer of 2023-24, which led to drastic feed shortages and concern for farmer welfare. Six workshops were held in partnership with Community Resource Centres with the final one on October 25 at the CWA Hall in Bridgetown. Throughout the course, the idea of a shared mission from different community sectors was deemed vital in farmer resilience with an action plan based on the workshops in the works. Community relations and communications manager Kristy Hitchens said the plan would be able to be applied in different communities, despite their unique needs. “What we have learned through this project is that best results are achieved when a variety of community sectors come together with a shared mission,” she said. “We have no doubt the wealth of information generated by participants on the (workshop) day, through the facilitated discussion will result in creation of a valuable resource for communities. “Discussion was lively and passionate, and we are incredibly grateful for the level of engagement shown. “We hope to have the action plan ready for distribution to communities early in 2025.” The action plan would be in the form of a booklet to outline steps, share stories and communicate learnings from across the six project workshops. South West NRM sustainable agriculture manager and project coordinator Peter Clifton said farmers had provided clarity around the social impacts in different communities and the gaps in services which could help. “We’ve covered enormous ground in the topics explored from research insights on the social impacts of drought by the University of WA Centre for Social Impact to personal drought stories of suffering and survival to men’s health initiatives, community development tools and financial support services for farm businesses,” he said. Expert facilitator Andrew Huffer guided the group in a brainstorming activity to highlight possible actions which could be rolled out and actioned by different communities in the future in preparation to drought. He said the aim of the workshops was to plan for a responsive phase, rather than reactive. For a segment of the workshop, the group split off into small teams to do an exercise using a “planning, response, recovery and review model”.