Drought Resilience Leadership Program

The Australian Rural Leadership Foundation (ARLF) has partnered with leadership development organisation Tasmanian Leaders to deliver this leadership development initiative. Participants from the local government areas of Dorset, Break O-Day, Glamorgan-Spring Bay, Sorell, Tasman and Flinders Island, have come together in Triabunna to focus on leadership, networks and building personal and community resilience.

Congratulating the participants who put their hand up to take part in this unique opportunity, ARLF Chief Executive Matt Linnegar said: “The Drought Resilience Leaders Development Program is bringing together a group of dedicated locals who are passionate about building resilience in their region. Our eastern Tasmania cohort are diverse and come from a range of industries and backgrounds.”

Eastern Tasmania is one of 12 regions in Australia selected to take part in the Drought Resilience Leaders Development Program and the last to commence sessions. The program will be delivered over five days and focus on topics including adaptive leadership, change theory, personal and community resilience, climate science, problem solving, mental and physical wellbeing, scenario planning, influence and network leadership. The second session will be held in St Helens December 4-5 2022.

Participant Tanya Greenwood, Project Officer at the Fingal Valley Neighbourhood House, says the program will help to build knowledge around climate change, support her to communicate better with others about climate change issues and create some collective action in the Gray community.

“The Eastern Highlands area where I live is notorious for extreme weather,” she said. “In recent weeks we’ve had multiple days where we’ve recorded up to 150ml of rain, so I’m keen to understand the impact of climate change and build a resilience strategy in managing that. Because of the extreme climate, I want to understand what the future looks like for me and how this will personally impact where I live.”

“Professionally I work with families and children and I’m interested in exploring the community impact of climate change on food security and public housing. Food security is a big concern, despite being a rich agricultural area, because all the food is sent to markets elsewhere where farmers can get better prices. In my area there aren’t any widespread cultural approaches, such as looking at regenerative soil practices and keeping locally produced food for the communities. There are a lot of implications for food prices and how we can keep our community vibrant so that people can stay on their farms so I’m keen to learn through this program how we can communicate and engage with that community on climate change.”

Greenwood is also enjoying the fact that the program is being run locally and the people attending are also from across the east coast of Tasmania – which she hopes will help remove some of the silos in terms of how communities currently work. Paul Ryan, Director of the Australian Resilience Centre and Ange Driver from Tasmanian Leaders are facilitating the program.