Congratulations to AdaptWest who were joint winners in the recent Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience's National Resilient Australia Awards 2022.
Receiving the Resilient Australia National Local Government Award, AdaptWest (on behalf of the cities of Charles Sturt, West Torrens and Port Adelaide Enfield) received the award for AdaptNow! Changing for Climate Change:
Extreme Heat. Power outage. Smoke impact. Localised flooding. In isolation, events like these can be challenging – but what happens when they occur in rapid succession or as cascading, compounding emergencies, leaving little or no time to recover between. What would you do? How would your community respond? These are the questions that the AdaptNow! Changing for Climate Change hypothetical explored. Built on a co-design process, the AdaptWest partnership sought to understand how our diverse communities would respond. We developed resources with community representatives, key agencies, and businesses and documented this process with a local filmmaker through interviews and storytelling to highlight messages of hope, connection and capacity building. A core message of “know your neighbour” shone through – that building strong and resilient communities will be what gets us through disasters – and that close neighbours will be the first ones to help in a time of crisis.
Check out some of the great resources available for both the community and business, including films and adaptation checklists, on the AdaptWest website.