White Paper celebrates doing it differently in the Blue Mountains

After a busy two years of working with the local business community, we recently wrapped up our Blue Mountains Business Community Resilience Project in NSW.

It was a productive time for the team, yielding two insightful white papers that will help inform Business Blue Mountains as it moves forward from a project to an established regional business network, voice and advocate for its local business community.

In the past 24 months, we have:-

• Launched a local business community website
• Launched a local community business directory
• Held several networking events including a successful Small Business Month evening
• Hosted meetings with local stakeholders
• Held our first ‘Do Tank’ – March 2022
• Launched the White Paper, ‘Getting Connected: Using Networks to Build Business Community Resilience in the Blue Mountains’ – June 2022
• Held our second and final ‘Do Tank’ – May 2023
• Launched a second White Paper, ‘From the Ground Up: Doing resilience differently in the Blue Mountains’ – June 2023
• And as part of a second related project, co-designed and launched the Blue Mountains Business Resilience Roadmap, which Business Blue Mountains will take forward as a micro-learning tool for local businesses.

This two-year project has built sustainable foundations to empower the regional business community to thrive.

Renae Hanvin
CEO + Founder Resilient Ready

Our thanks go to our grant partners Business Blue Mountains, particularly director Mark Barton who worked closely with us to successfully apply for grant funding to stand up a regional business network in the Blue Mountains, and new chair Emma Madison, along with directors past and present, Kieran Best, Nathan Smith, Robin Hilson, Anne Barrett, James Douglas, Mike Bowller, and Lawrence Atkinson.

We would like to acknowledge the many local businesses who participated in our surveys and events, gave us feedback, and shared their business journeys post-Black Summer and during the challenging years that followed, overshadowed by a disaster no one saw coming – the Covid-19 pandemic.

We also want to recognise our two frequent Blue Mountains collaborators, Dr Val Ingham and David Parsons, who have made themselves available at every opportunity to offer guidance, advice and insight from an Australian disaster recovery and emergency management perspective, provided not just as subject matter experts but also as local residents with lived experience.

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.