Research update for Volunteering Victoria

Volunteering Victoria hears the latest research on spontaneous emergency volunteering, specifically for volunteer managers, from Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC researcher Dr Blythe McLennan.

Dr McLennan, a human geographer in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University, spoke with Volunteering Victoria Sector Development Manager Sara Sterling as part of their 2020 webinar series. She discussed the emergency management sector and the role spontaneous volunteers play in the human response to emergencies.

Dr McLennan described the research being undertaken as part of the CRC project Enabling sustainable emergency volunteering, explaining how the emergency management sector can best enable the value of volunteering for communities before, during and after an emergency. She is currently completing an environmental scan as part of her research, which will look at understanding how the emergency management sector is thinking and planning for the future of volunteering. 

In the webinar, Ms Sterling heard about the plans, projects and programs across the emergency management sector that are responding to changes in the way people volunteer, and invited representatives of emergency management organisations to contact Dr McLennan to share information about initiatives in their organisation, region, division, group, unit or brigade so they can be included in the environmental scan. Results will be shared later in the year.  

Contact Dr McLennan on blythe.mclennan@rmit.edu.au for more information or listen to the full webinar here.