A research team from the University of Melbourne attended the opening junior soccer games of the Castlemaine Goldfields Football Club season on April 22 to present Junior Coordinator and Club Secretary Tony Cormack with a cheque for $3,500.
These funds were raised by 94 members of the football club who agreed to participate in a research project called Community Engagement for Disaster Risk Reduction (CEDRR).
CEDRR is a research project designed to record and analyse local perceptions of risk and risk management at the household scale, with a focus on flood risk. More specifically, CEDRR seeks to better understand the actions that locals are taking, or not taking, to mitigate risk.
“As a community focused club, we are extremely grateful to have had the chance to work with Melbourne Uni as part of CEDDR pilot scheme. Clubs like ours are typically reliant on a combination of registration fees and local community sponsorship so any chance to work with others partners to raise much needed funds brings huge benefits,” Tony Cormack said.
“The outcome of this scheme will see upgrades to training equipment for Junior and Small Sided programs. From all at CGFC a huge thanks to our members who have taken part, and to Brian and the whole CEDRR team. We wish the program every success in the future as they roll out to more community-based organisations.” he said.
Preliminary findings from the 94 survey-interviews completed by members of the football club can be found on the CEDRR website.
As the next step of this innovative community engagement research, the research team from the University of Melbourne will be reaching out to the 94 participants to seek their participation in a 10-minute follow-up interview. The aim of these follow-up engagements is to briefly reconnect with participants to see whether the initial discussion has had any impact. Each participant in the follow-ups will generate an additional $25 donation to the football club.
The research team is led by Associate Professor Brian Cook who, along with the Castlemaine Goldfields Football Club, sincerely thank the community for participating in this exciting research, which provides risk managers with a better understanding of local flood resilience perceptions and actions.
