Linking Council and Community

In this episode of Doing Disasters Differently: The Podcast, host Renae Hanvin speaks with Allie Guegan & Zac Zorn about Linking Council and Community.

Together, they explore innovative community resilience projects led by the City of Casey, focusing on co-design and social capital building to enhance disaster preparedness and response. 

If you’re passionate about emergency preparedness, disaster recovery, community resilience, business continuity, or resilience leadership, this show is for you. 

Subscribe now and join us as we explore smarter, stronger, and more connected ways to prepare for the future. 

Transcript

Renae Hanvin
Hello and welcome to the next episode of Doing Disasters Differently. Today we are talking about linking council and community, and I'm so excited to have both Ali and Zac from the city of Casey. So a little bit about them. 

So Ali Guegan is the Head of Emergency Management at the City of Casey, and she's leading an emergency management and resilience across one of Australia's fastest growing councils. With more than 10 years of experience in Victorian councils, Ali is also a volunteer firefighter with her local brigade. And I love how so many people have the volunteering and the work or part of their life. Now, Zac Zorn is a member of Ali's team and he's currently in a grant funded project focused role as Storm Resilient Coordinator and has a substantive role at the Emergency Management, sorry, as an Emergency Management Coordinator. Zac has experience working in community recovery 
from both storms and floods in the Yarra Ranges and has a passion for community engagement that can drive positive social change. And I can't wait for you to hear so much of that positivity that I've been lucky enough to be collaborating with. 

Now, I like to start with how we met because it's always about social capital building, isn't it? So my connexion with the city of Casey actually goes back about 15 years. 
when I had the privilege of creating the new internal communications brand called Simply Brilliant. Now, fast forward to a couple of years ago, and our paths crossed again, this time with Ali and Zac, through their roles in the City of Casey's Emergency Management team. Now, one of the many, many awesome initiatives that they've done is the City of Casey's 
place-based community resilience project. And I'm really excited to share that project with our listeners today. Ali and Zac, thanks so much for joining me. 

Allie Guegan   
Thanks, Renae. We're really excited to be part of your episode. 

Zac Zorn   
Yeah, definitely. Thank you, Renae. 

 Renae Hanvin   
You're so welcome. Now there's two of you. So I'm going to kind of pose some questions to each of you, but please feel free to jump in after the other person. So Allie, can you please explain what does the Emergency Management Team or EMT at the City of Casey do? What are you responsible for? 

What are some of the common myths about what you're not responsible for, but people might think that you are? 

Allie Guegan  
Thanks. Yeah, good question. So people are actually really often surprised to learn that councils play such a big part of emergency management, although, you know, we don't lead the response to emergencies like the fire services, the police, ambulance. 
the SES, we do play a really vital part of the before, during and after. Right actually across the city of Casey as an organisation, as part of Council's core business, there's quite a lot that's done as part of risk mitigation and often it's not even thought about as part of the emergency management cycle, but absolutely contributes to that risk reduction, things like land use planning, you know, food safety inspections and immunisation programmes that prevent disease outbreak, even things like maintaining road and drainage infrastructure to help, you know, access and egress and also flood prevention. But for our team, as the emergency management team at City of Casey, we've got five key streams of work that we cover. First one being our municipal emergency management planning. So we do have legislated responsibilities to facilitate local level multi-agency planning with all of the key agencies. So bringing together all of the emergency services, different state government departments, relief organisations like the Red Cross and Salvation Army. We bring everyone together and chair the committee and work on multi-agency plans to support major emergencies within our city. The other stream of our work is fire prevention. 

So again, a lot of what we do is governed by legislation. So we do a stream of work that's under the fire services legislation that looks at, again, planning and preparing for bushfire emergencies in partnership with agencies and other public land managers, but also then working with private property owners around vegetation risk reduction on their property and also ensuring that councils managing bushfire risk on its land. The third stream of what we do is community engagement. So that for our team is quite a breadth of activity can range from education campaigns through to the sorts of initiatives that we're going to speak to you a bit more about today, which is the, you know, more community resilience based work, you know, working in partnership with community. 

And then I guess the last two elements of what our team does is when there is a major emergency, you know, councils aren't emergency service organisations. So we have to prepare all of the systems and processes and governance and then train staff around, you know, the roles that they will play during an emergency and some of the things that are, you know, like councils will are responsible for running the relief centres. So like your evacuation centres that sometimes you see on TV when there's major events across the country. So councils will run those. So yeah, we need to do all the training and preparedness for those types of functions. 

And then of course, when an emergency does happen, then we respond. So emergency services will activate us. And primarily what we deal with at City of Casey is smaller scale events. So typically house fires where a family might need support following, but it can then range into if there's major floods or bushfires. Yeah, running those relief centres and working alongside the emergency services to assist them. So yeah, quite a bit. 

Renae Hanvin
So I was going to, I was literally about to say that. I was like, just a small list, but so important. And I think obviously, you know, as the world's going at the moment, we are having more types of disruptions. And I think really what I've noticed from your team is that you are, you have a really defined role to deliver and you absolutely know and own are like so fantastic at delivering that role. And a big part also is educating other people in the business to understand what their roles as well, which I think has been really interesting for me to kind of, you know, I guess, as I've been collaborating with you to see, you know, you know what your roles are, but if others don't know what your roles are, particularly in a council type environment, it gets a bit tricky. 

But that's you know, you and your team are really firsthand, I guess, at bringing in those other areas because it's not just, I guess, emergency management and response is not just reliant on your department. It's really relevant to across the whole council, but certainly, I guess, led by, you know, your team, which, yeah, it's been really interesting to watch a lot of really positive progression.

 
Now, I mentioned in the intro that I created City of Casey's internal brand campaign when they moved into Bundjal Place a long, long, long, long time ago called Simply Brilliant. And I have to say that when I was engaged to work with you on the City of Casey place-based community resilience project, that brand message really rang true. 

Allie Guegan   
Yeah. 

Renae Hanvin 
When you presented the opportunity, mainly because you didn't give me, I guess, this is what you need to do with the community, it was really, here's what we want to help the community with, but we want them to work out the right way to get there. And I'm going to be honest, that was really progressive in an approach from other councils and other 
opportunities that I've collaborated with. And I guess it's, you know, sounds pretty simply brilliant to me. But can I ask you, the Community Resilient Project, like what is it and how did it come about and why did you want it delivered differently? 

Allie Guegan 
Yes, excellent questions. So back in 2024, our colleagues in the sustainability team developed a climate Resilient Casey plan, which was quite an ambitious plan that looked at actions that right across the organisation and also in the community, that could be done to support both council and the community to adapt to the impact of climate change. So with, you know, more increasing frequency of severe weather events, you know, we know that we need to adapt and prepare for that. And one of the actions that was assigned to the emergency management team to deliver was piloting A place-based community co-design so that we could work with community to identify ways that would strengthen their resilience to the impacts of climate change and in particular the increasing frequency and severity of severe weather events. 

That action, you know, obviously was quite broad. And so we did have the opportunity to, you know, sort of from that, then work out how we're going to deliver this in the best way. And we knew from a lot of research and things that the best way to really build 
resilience in the community and build that social capital isn't through doing things to the community, but with the community. And, you know, we could have taken the approach of another education campaign, you know, developing another preparedness resource and going the community and saying, oh, we've got this booklet that you can fill out and, you know, preparedness done. 

But instead, we really wanted to look at an approach of, yeah, empowering the community because we hoped that that would lead to more sustainable outcomes where then the community would be able to continue that resilience journey themselves in their neighbourhood without council being actively involved. Yeah, so that was kind of our like overarching goal going into it. We then took an approach of deciding which location. City of Casey is a pretty big municipality, so there were lots of different communities that we could have piloted it with, but one of our key priorities was to work with our community members in the coastal area, so particularly Blind Bight, Warneet, just because they did have some really strong social ties already within that community, being that it is a little bit of a more smaller township. 

So we already had that as a foundation to build on, but also they are a community within Casey that is probably a little bit more exposed to climate related weather events. So, you know, storms, floods, bushfires. And so we definitely had them as a priority. And then we also wanted to pilot the approach with a more urbanised community because we knew that, you know, sometimes engaging them in conversations about preparing for emergencies, particularly natural hazards like bushfires, floods, storms, can be a little bit trickier because being in an urban setting, it probably is not, you know, front of mind for a lot of people living in those communities. So we decided to do the other targeted area as Hampton Park. So we sort of had that overarching goal. We knew where we wanted to pilot and that was kind of our focus going into it. So then we engaged yourself, Renae, with Resilient Ready and we started planning the, how we were actually going to deliver it together. So yeah, so that was kind of how we went into it. One of the things we worked on with you in the earliest stages was, I guess, just setting some of those broad parameters. You know, we wanted to be quite flexible with community, but you know, there were some limitations. 

Renae Hanvin   
Yeah. 

Allie Guegan  
We unfortunately weren't in the position to build any new roads or any, you know, significant sort of like hard infrastructure. So we did need to set some of those limitations. And once we had done some of that initial planning and setting sort of the direction for the project, Then in late 2024, we opened up the expressions of interest and started promoting it to the community to get some interest. And just around that same time of year was when we recruited Zac into the team. And so then once he started in early 2025, he took over the programme and yeah, continued working with in the community across 2025 and at the start of this year. And it's been probably one of the most successful projects that we've had so far. 

Renae Hanvin    
Yeah. And fun, I have to say it's been fun. But just to go back to what you said, I honestly, you know, a council coming to me to say, this is what we want to achieve, but we want you to guide the community as to what that means for them is really quite forward thinking. So I just really want to acknowledge that. I think the other side of the fence too, being those two very, very different communities. And as we know in a lot of the work that I've delivered, you can take the same thing to two different communities and you're going to have very, very, very different outcomes. 

And we're going to talk a little bit about that as well. But having those two communities, the coastal one, impacted, you know, very engaged in climate related resilience. And then that suburban or, you know, peri-urban one that's not so much again, has been a really interesting learning experience. Now, I remember one of the first conversations I had with you both was, you know, what role and participation do you want to have as council? Because again, So many of the projects that I've worked on, it's like, we will be there, we will ask the questions, we will do the presentations, which doesn't always work with these types of projects and communities. And I remember you were so committed to this being for the community, by the community, to benefit the community. 

You literally said to me, if the community doesn't want us there, then we won't be there. But I kind of, I think I said to you, well, hang on a minute, we're going to build some bridging ties, sorry, some linking ties here. So in my opinion, if we have the right people from council and clearly Ali and Zac, I think you should be involved and be part of the process because then the community builds a connexion with you as a person and you as a council person, you as a linking tie, which is obviously going to have a better outcome in the end. So that focus on linking social capital was actually quite a strategic decision that we had. Now I'm going to ask though, why was it important for you to potentially not be there during the process to make sure the community preference 
was the priority. And Zac, I might ask you. 

Zac Zorn   
Yeah, thanks Renae. Yeah, it was interesting for me because I obviously joined Council around this time and was really excited to get into the project and certainly the discussions that Ali and I had early. I think we wanted this to be as close to a true co-design process as it could be. Now, I know the term co-design gets thrown around a lot these days, so certainly not going out and saying, we're going to run this amazing co-design. We really wanted that community empowerment and really wanted the community to be able to lead this and design this for themselves as much as was practically possible. And also, I think important to acknowledge that councils are large organizations, particularly in the city of Casey, and we have many different touch points with the community.

 
So we didn't want any preconceived ideas or impressions of who council are and the services that we provide to influence this project negatively. So we really wanted, I suppose, give space to community and the community leaders that we were working with to self-determine what their projects were going to be and how they were going to build resilience in their communities. But yeah, probably as you said, I think that linking social capital in that regard, I think I'm really glad that we pretty early on identified that no, it was going to be important for us to be there and be part of the discussion. Again, not us leading any discussions. I was certainly like, I think we did a really good job of sitting back 
in letting community lead. But it was really great to be there as that supporting link and just have conversations as well. And I think over the 12 to 15 months that we were involved, just to see the evolution of the relationships that we had in both community settings was really cool for me personally. And I think went a long way to achieving the positive outcomes that we had.

Probably as well, just need to build on what Ali said in response to your last question, that I think we were quite lucky to have the internal support that we did. Certainly the climate Resilient Casey Plan influencing our work. I think as you were saying, Renae, often government councils, we have set outcomes or set agendas that we're trying to work towards. 

So I think we were really lucky that we had this open-ended strategic objective that we were, you know, we were empowering community to lead their own journey. And I think that was really special and really contributed to the project success. But yeah, again, ultimately us being there regularly just went so, so much of the way to building trust and contributing to meaningful outcomes. 

 Renae Hanvin 
Yeah, 100%. And I remember in some of the first sessions we had with the community, in one community in particular, and they were like looking like, where is the bit that you're telling us what to do and where is it? It's like, it's not there. So again, the community, I guess, identifying and understanding that was also a great leap in terms of a new type of relationship being able to build because it really was community led. 

Now, Zac, we mentioned before with Ali as well that we worked with two very, very, very different community groups. And there was definitely not a one size fits all approach. My flower pot growing analogy certainly worked on one, certainly didn't work on the other.

Can you just explain the process that we used for each group and why were your key learnings of, yeah, what were your key learnings of the journeys that we had with each of those two groups? 

Zac Zorn    
Yeah, I think for me it was like, you know, to answer the last part first, the biggest learning was the value of meeting community where they're at. Like, I think we went in with a set approach around meeting monthly, but still meeting community where they're at. Did they want to meet online? Did they want to meet in person? Like, we still put that to them very early but we still had a structure that were probably going to meet three to four times at the start, you know, around project design, give them some time to go away. I don't think we stuck to that initial design for either of the groups, but in both settings, it went very different parts for how we worked with them. So I think to start with the Coastal Villages group, as Ali touched on, Blind Bight at Warneet, very early on, it was established that they wanted to meet in person, they wanted to meet regularly, and they also wanted to include Cannons Creek, the third coastal village, which was really cool to see that self-determination early on, and then really advocating for their own communities. And we were very happy to facilitate that and open up that project scope. I think with that group, they had a, because they had such a strong sense of place and such a strong sense of community. They were community leaders that were already widely involved in their villages or broadly in the city of Casey as well, that they were really able to early on, identify the need and identify what they wanted to achieve. So then it was just really working through the governance with them, helping to support them to break down some barriers to actually achieving that. Like I think we were really enabling and trying to do the heavy lifting for them. And the whole time that group had an outcome that they were trying to achieve.

And yeah, still today, like they're still meeting and still working towards that independently, which is terrific. Whereas I think with Hampton Park, we probably encountered fairly early on this issue of what resilience is. And that's probably like a key learning as well around how we're framing that community resilience, because there were almost two streams that we found early on around well, what is climate resilience and then what is community resilience to severe weather or natural disasters and that sort of thing. So that was really interesting and I think a challenge that we had to overcome, because how do we deliver a project that's satisfying everyone's interpretation of what we're here to do? And yeah, I guess on the one hand, we could have set stricter parameters and avoided that, but then are you compromising the co-design nature of this project? So yeah, it probably leaned on you a lot in that setting, Renae, and I think we were lucky to have your expertise there to help guide that group through a tricky situation where they were almost splintering themselves and going down different paths.  
 
So we probably at a point had to back off a bit as well and let them do that self-discovery and then come back in and work with them to achieve a more, I think they ended up being probably a more tangible outcome, like a more product in a sense, which suits that probably urban community more than the coastal villages where there's a strong sense of 
place and a stronger understanding of how severe weather impacts those communities. So certainly a lot of structure to how we engaged both groups at the start, but then a more fluid approach down the end. And I think, yeah, my key reflection is that it's all about meeting community where they're at, being flexible, trying to break down barriers for them.  
 
And as much as we talk a lot about, you know, community-led, it can't be all up to them. We've sort of really come in and try to do the heavy lifting and break down those barriers. 

Renae Hanvin  
It's so true. Actually, I was at the DMC conference on the Gold Coast last week and I was listening to some fantastic council people from, where they from Adelaide Hills and Noosa Council and Douglas Shire Council. And that's exactly what they said too, for programmes to help and support communities to build resilience council, particularly because you're, you know, frontline in that sense to the community has to do components of the heavy lifting. And I think that's what we did very much in a way like, you know, guiding and supporting, but enabling them. And I really like what you said, because on reflection, it's so true. Giving one community in particular, the space to kind of work out like, what is this? What's going on? What do we want to do? What can we do?  
 
which was really a very different process to the other community as well. Now, can you share what the end results were for each group? Because they were quite different. And were they what you thought they'd be at the start of the project? 

Zac Zorn    
Yeah, I think, no, they weren't what I thought they would be, to be honest. Yeah, so in our coastal villages, the participants of the programme representing the three coastal villages of Blind By, Cannons Creek and Warneet, at the end of our engagement with them, they incorporated as a community organisation, Casey Coastal Villages Resilient Support to give them a plug on here for anyone listening. So they're an incorporated organisation and they launched at a community festival earlier this year. So they actually had the support of a few different organisations at the local Rotary, Lions and CFA to come in and uplift them and launch this community event, which was really fantastic to see. 

And they're still meeting monthly now to talk about issues like community connexion and resilience to future severe weather events, particularly in those communities, storms and power outages. So that's really fantastic to see.

And while it wasn't what I was expecting, if you had to kind of press us at the start, Renae, on what is like an ideal case scenario, again, not wanting to impose anything on these two communities, but that probably almost is our idea that we've now got a resilience group in action and doing really incredible work. 

They even were up in Hillsville a few weeks ago, meeting with the Resilient Group up there to exchange ideas, so it's just really terrific to see that. 

 
Renae Hanvin    
Oh, we talked about that in one of our meetings, didn't we? 

Zac Zorn   
Yeah, yeah, we did. So they, yeah, they went up there and I think Hillsville might be coming down to pay them a visit as well. So really terrific to see that initiative and that knowledge sharing between communities. So yeah, that probably for us is an ideal case scenario. We've still got an ongoing relationship with them and hopefully it's beneficial to them too because they've got an in it council and 

Renae Hanvin   
Awesome! 

Zac Zorn    
breaking down barriers and helping them understand where council can help, not just in our team, but in different service areas for those three communities as well. Hampton Park, on the other hand, being a more urban community, probably was even less sure of what to expect in that setting. And in the end, they produced a Be Ready Casey Community sticker.

So it's a nice fluoro yellow sticker that is intended to be stuck on tubs, really to create an emergency kit. But in my opinion, the most amazing part about their journey is that we helped them by getting 13,000 of these stickers printed. And so far through an informal network of volunteers, they've letterboxed about 9,000 of those stickers to households in Hampton Park, Lynbrook, and Lyndhurst. So they've even got, you know, residents that weren't involved in our co-design project specifically to come on board and letterbox this sticker. So just really terrific again to see that community empowerment and 
linking in with their networks to hand out those stickers. 

Renae Hanvin   
And as you were saying, I mean, two very different outcomes. So we have the, you know, set up established entity and the festivals and, you know, just the real seeding into existing community events and whatnot. And then the sticker, but as you said, that informal network and the people who just came out to hand them out and everyone was talking about them and social media was going off and you know, those bright yellow stickers were creating conversations about resilience. 

 
Zac Zorn 
Mm. And I should probably say as well that we haven't just had to say goodbye with Hampton Park either, that we've still got that ongoing relationship with the community leaders that are now involved. While they're not like a formal group, they're still all connected informally, they're still connected to us. So again, they've got that linking ties into council. 

Renae Hanvin    
Yes. 

Zac Zorn 
We've helped them with the sustainability team of LinkedIn with a few of the leaders to run the adaptation game with them. So again, just that into council and helping link them up with other teams and services and that ongoing relationship, I think, is a really unintended but incredible benefit from this project. 

Renae Hanvin 
Yeah. Absolutely huge benefit. So I'm going to share a couple of favourite moments of mine from the project. The first one, without a doubt, is watching the connexion between Zac and each community group grow alongside the community members building their confidence to take over the project reins because we're very much like We're not doing this for you, but Zac, I have to say you were phenomenal in that building that connexion with those people who, let's be honest, some of them at the start came in and were very anti-anti, oh, what's this about? No, what are you doing to do, da, da, da, da. By the end of it, you were almost like having, you know, dinners, going around to the house for dinners almost, but they were inviting you to everything. 

And all the feedback or a lot of the feedback that came was Zac was so amazing, so helpful. And as you said, that is now building a linking tie between all those community members and into council, which you can then obviously support by connecting outwards, but also inwards. So I know Karen, and we'll shout out Karen, who's a really active, lovely community member. 

Zac Zorn   
Yep. 

Renae Hanvin  
And now, you know, there's other parts of the council who want Karen to kind of contribute and participate, and she's super happy to do that. So, you know, your example of really strengthening A linking tie, absolutely. I think my other thing was the pride on the faces of the community members at their community event, and then when they were handing out the stickers as well. 

Zac Zorn    
Yeah. 

Renae Hanvin 
There's so much in the process of creating a programme or an event, and we have all these meetings and we think of the idea. And when you get to the point where it's happened, and I remember the coastal villages when, you know, they created a little treasure hunt type thing, and we had the follow up meeting afterwards.

And just the excitement in their voice around how the kids loved it and the parents loved it. And then everyone went and, you know, answered all the questions about fire risk and everything. I mean, that's gold. And again, seeing the yellow stickers everywhere and, you know, members of the local council, you know, wanting to promote it and talk about it, that's gold as well.

But I think the biggest thing for me was in the coastal villages, the very last meeting, and look, we'd had some robust conversations in some of those meetings as well, but in the wrap up session, one of the community members asked me why I didn't go in and tell them what to do. Renae, you are the resilience expert. Why did you not come in here and just tell us what to do?

 And I explained it, you know, why. And then he said to me at the end and wrote it in the feedback, you know, you really helped us grow. And that, I don't know, that really touched me because I think you don't want to go and tell a community what to do. You want to help them grow. And yes, I did use the flower pot analogy for that community.

But it was so touching to see that because I think the biggest moments from these projects is seeing how they prove that resilience isn't something that councils deliver to communities, but it's a real example of doing something where you're building with the communities. So Ali and Zac, what were your favourite moments or components from this project? 

Allie Guegan  
For me, I didn't stay actively involved in working with the community after getting the project off the ground, but I think it was a really nice opportunity at the end. I was able to come along to the final sessions with the two groups. Zac invited me along and I guess for my role, I play that more behind the scenes of, you know, taking the strategic actions and the other drivers for our work and then working with my team members to help support and enable them to do their best work. And it was just, you know, this really wonderful opportunity to come along to the debrief and hear the community members reflect. 
on, you know, this real deep appreciation for Zac and the respect that he had shown them, but also for them to feel that council had actually genuinely partnered with them. I think, yeah, just, you know, similar to what you were saying, Renae, like it really touches you, like you do feel you walk away from that feeling quite proud of like what's been achieved. 

So I think for me, that was a really great moment. And probably the other one isn't so much a moment, but more, you know, again, sort of walking away from the session and the project wrapping up is just also now, and it's a bit of what you've just been talking about is like these linking ties that we have, like, for these community members, yes, they've got these great links into council, but for us and our team, we've got these fantastic links into the community now. And like that is so critical for our team to have, because if we do in the future have a significant emergency occur, you know, being able to go to these trusted people within the community and hear firsthand from them around what's the concern, you know, how we can help. You know, it's just really opened up this window of opportunity for us to keep building these relationships directly in the community. So yeah, those probably the two things that most value from the project. 

Renae Hanvin   
And Zac? 

Zac Zorn    
Yeah, well, firstly, thank you, Renae, for your generous words. I think that probably that probably is my favourite moment as well, just being welcomed into these two community settings. I think it's a real privilege of being a council officer, particularly like a community facing council officer that you get to be out working in these community settings. 
and both groups, sure at the start there was hard questions asked of council and that's always welcome and that's completely fair, but to break down those barriers and then be welcomed into both community settings and the hospitality shown towards like myself in you, Renae, it was just a real highlight.

It always felt very warm and productive when we were at these meetings and it felt collaborative, which I think is just fantastic. And especially considering we're in a time and space where trust in government generally is deteriorating slower than what it has been recently. So just to break down those barriers and form really trusting relationships with community is just fantastic. And I certainly think it'll be a career highlight for a long time. And then beyond that, just seeing both groups continue to meet in their current forms, seeing Casey Coastal Villages Resilient Support meeting as a formal incorporated group and then seeing in Hampton Park our community leaders like Karen still meeting informally and just the momentum that they've got from this project and the fact that they're still running with it now is just, yeah, really, really terrific. 

Renae Hanvin  
It is super exciting. And I think I want to, I just want to pull out one thing, Zac, that I noticed that you did that I think had a really big impact is that you never, we never, well, we never shone away from any of the hard questions either. So there were a few things happening in the communities that they wanted to sort of focus on. And I guess we recognised it and acknowledged it. 

But every time there was a question that came in that you couldn't answer or you didn't know, you always said, I'll come back to you. And you always did. And I think that is huge. So to build that, you know, strengthen those linking ties with the community, it's not to ignore or, you know, discourage kind of what they what they're after.

But actually to think about that too. And same with you, Ali, because I know in one of the communities, they're, you know, really concerned about, you know, the recovery centres and where are they going to be. But when you came for that wrap up, catch up, and then you explain to them the process of how it works, now they're like, oh, great. Well, what else can we do to support you in that process? So I think again, even if hard questions come from the community, we know often they do, it's acknowledging that and then going back to kind of go, okay, well, let's address this if we can't now, because we don't know, but bringing the right person in to address that as well. So that was a really, a really key kind of outcome for me as well. Now I always end with the same question. 

So I'm going to limit you to two each. Ali and Zac, can you share what are the two things you'd like to be done differently in the disaster space? 

Allie Guegan  
Yeah. I think Zac and I may have one that's quite similar because we did talk before this podcast to make sure that we weren't going to overlap too much in our responses, but we both feel very passionately about this. So I think it's warranted. But my first one would be obviously more investment in you know, initiatives that support that social capital building and that resilience development in the community. You know, often a lot of investment goes into the more tangible things and, you know, building social capital is quite intangible, but obviously it leads to much more sustainable outcomes. 

So yeah, I would love to see more opportunity for us to do this kind of work. I think for me, the second one is probably more of a one that's closer to heart, which is I wish more people would get involved in emergency service volunteering just because it is, again, another great way that you can build social capital and resilience in your community. 
People are often surprised that majority of Victoria's emergency management workforce is voluntary based. I think last stats I saw were that there were over 100,000 emergency service volunteers and it's just such a great opportunity not only to be part of the emergency response but you know, it is a community within a community. It's bringing together people from all different walks of life. You know, it is quite different to other types of volunteering in the community. You know, all volunteering is really valuable, but it is something that is a bit more of a quite a commitment and something that's long term for people. So yeah, I think it's just, It is one of those things that as people's lives get busier and society changes, it's probably not something that is at the forefront of people's minds as much anymore. But, you know, if I could wave my magic wand and make something different, I think it would be that, yeah, more people could get involved in volunteering in their local SCS or CFA or Red Cross. 

Renae Hanvin  
That's a great one. I haven't had that one before, actually, but I love that one. And Zac. 

Zac Zorn   
Yeah, just to link into Ali's first one, I remember hearing Professor Aldrich speak a couple of times now, and I feel like he always speaks about, particularly in Australia, we invest a lot in great infrastructure and the built environment to prepare for disasters. And often that feels like it's at the expense of our social infrastructure. So I think projects like this one are, yeah, you know, a real great example that for a fairly low cost compared to building a new something physical, we can get real, real tangible benefit to community and for a long term as well. So I'd love to see, as Ali said, more investment in our social infrastructure and social capital in that disaster space.

Look, my second one probably links to us being on here today, but I'd love to see emergency management, resilience, recovery. I'd love to see practitioner voices amplified more as well. I think there's a lot of, you know, we're a growing sector, certainly, and there's a lot of great research coming out and a lot of really interesting, useful research, but I think it often misses a link to practitioners around the practical challenges around resourcing and probably finance that we're encountering. And certainly when I speak to other, we're lucky at council that I think there are really great support networks of emergency management recovery resilience practitioners. And I always feel like I learn so much from other councils around how we're overcoming practical challenges to do really great work in the community. So yeah, I'd love to see more ways and get coming on podcast is certainly one of those. I'd love to see more practitioner voices amplified in our sector. 

Renae Hanvin   
Well, there you go, Zac, just start your own podcast. But I also need just to share with you too, so the conference that I mentioned I was just at, Zoe Darcy is actually leading a LGA capability toolkit framework. And part of that is a co-op of people, like community of practise bringing people together. 

So I think it's been very recognised. And I think there's about 10 pilot LGAs that are part of that. But I know that's something that's in practise that sounds amazing. So I'll connect you in. Yeah. Thank you so much. I could literally talk to you. I could keep talking to you all day. And there are so many other things that we've done that we could also talk about at another time. 

Zac Zorn 
Yeah, it sounds very exciting then. Yeah, please do, please do. 

Allie Guegan    
Yeah. 

Renae Hanvin    
But I really appreciate, I guess, the openness to collaborate with me on delivering this project differently, but also your wantingness, if that's even a word, to really have it open to be community led. I mean, it's a really, it is a really great case study for linking council and community in a really positive way.

So a big thank you to Ali and Zac from the City of Casey and no doubt, I'll talk to you again soon. 

Zac Zorn  
Thank you, Renae. 

Allie Guegan
Sounds good. Thanks, Renae.