Collaborating for impact to benefit Young Farmers

One of Resilient Ready’s core values is collaboration. When planning a project, we always focus on collaboration, not duplication, in our partnerships with organisations and communities.

Through our AG.Biz Ready program, in partnership with the Young Farmer Business Program run by the Department of Primary Industries, we’ve seen first-hand the power of collaboration when working with young farmers across NSW.

Agriculture is a busy space, and with new funding announced by the Federal Government in the 2024 Budget, there is a renewed focus on drought resilience, not just on farms but at the social and community level.

While this will mean more people and projects operating alongside our own, for us, it’s an opportunity to connect and streamline efforts to ensure disaster resilience is being strengthened in the right ways, with the right people and communities, and with the right focus and priorities.

Recently, Resilient Ready had the pleasure of teaming up with Southern New England Landcare in Northern NSW to host a joint community dinner for their drought project and our AG.Biz Ready workshops. It was a great night featuring Anna Hughes from the Lachlan Hughes Foundation, sharing her experience of building personal resilience after a family farm tragedy.

Through the AG.Biz Ready program, we’ve teamed up with numerous other local organisations including the Rural Financial Counselling Service to provide expert input into our Business Community Resilience Toolkit solution.

Other examples from previous projects include working closely with local emergency services to engage with tourism businesses along the Great Ocean Road, Phillip Island, and the Bass Coast in Victoria.

As we say with businesses participating in our programs, collaborators aren’t just the people in your corner. Our Toolkit program has a ‘Competitor Collaborations’ module, where we help businesses see their competitors as teammates and business partners. Collaboration is almost always a win-win for everyone.

There’s rarely a reason not to collaborate — working together helps you, your partners, and your beneficiaries to be and do better.

In our sector, collaborating ensures disaster resilience practitioners can present a united front to communities and demonstrate that we value each other’s contributions and work. It’s not about trying to compete with each other over who can make communities the safest, but about working together to make a tangible difference in this space and reach our shared visions and missions.

If you’re keen to collaborate with us (or anyone!), don’t hold back on making the first move. It doesn’t hurt to ask to help out or be involved in some way, especially if you share a common vision and complementary skills.

Happy Collaborating!

Resilient Ready is a social enterprise delivering innovative solutions to enable every organisation to thrive before, during and after disasters. To keep updated on news and current projects, sign up to our newsletter.