A new model for helping

How people volunteer to keep their community safe from natural hazards is changing. As our work and life commitments change, many people do not have the time to dedicate to traditional ways of volunteering with an emergency service, undergo the required training and develop the ability to respond to potentially dangerous situations. But they still want to help, and they still want to volunteer.

With research showing that the nature of volunteering and citizen involvement in disaster management is fundamentally changing, advice from the RMIT University team led by Prof John Handmer and Dr Blythe McLennan is regularly sought by individual agencies and organisations in the development of guides and policies around volunteering and spontaneous volunteering.

Research from this project has influenced key national initiatives, with findings from the study used extensively for the development of the National Spontaneous Volunteer Strategy by the Australia–New Zealand Emergency Management Committee.

The strategy provides advice to emergency service agencies on what they need to be aware of, and what they need to consider and plan for when working with spontaneous volunteers. Important issues such as legal obligations and social media are also covered, with the work of the project team integral to the Strategy’s completion.

Building on this, the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience has drawn directly on the research to develop a new handbook on spontaneous volunteer management. The handbook provides important guidance for organisations on how to incorporate the principles of the National Spontaneous Volunteer Strategy, and the most recent research on spontaneous volunteering, into their own plans and procedures.

Emergency services are also using the research, with the New South Wales State Emergency Service using the findings to shape how the organisation will recruit volunteers.

“Findings from the research really helped to shape our Volunteering Reimagined strategy, launched in 2017,” says Andrew McCullough, Volunteering Strategist at the NSW SES.  

“We know that people want to volunteer in different ways, and that not everyone in the community is able to volunteer regularly or for extended periods of time. Flexible volunteering options are now essential to the way we operate.

“The NSW SES is planning to lead in this space, and it is only with the help and the research of the CRC that this is possible,” he says.

In Western Australia, the Department of Fire and Emergency Services has used the research to develop new directions in volunteering, while South Australia’s Department of Communities and Social Inclusion, Volunteering ACT and Volunteering Victoria have also been influenced by the work in developing polices and guides to volunteer management, both during emergencies and in recovery. Be Ready Warrandyte, a community group in one of Melbourne’s high bushfire risk suburbs, has drawn extensively on the research to help educate and support their local community.

“What is now crystal clear is that the old volunteering model is not sustainable,” says John Schauble, Emergency Management Victoria’s Director of Emergency Management Resilience.

“We need to look at different ways of doing things, and this research has pointed us in the directions we need to head.”