On this page
Are you a young person aged 12 – 25 living in Victoria?
Are you keen to share your experience navigating disasters, your disability or both?
Are you passionate about including disabled young people in emergency management and disaster resilience?
Background
The Centre of Excellence: Young People & Disasters (Centre) are recruiting young people to join 3 workshops to hear the experiences of disabled young people when faced with disasters to shape a new training for emergency management workers.
About the Centre
Victoria University’s (VU) Youth and Community Research Group and Youth Affairs Council Victoria (YACVic) are partnering to establish the Centre of Excellence: Young People & Disasters (Centre).
The Centre champions the inclusion and active involvement of young people to contribute to all aspects of disasters.
Climate change & disasters
We acknowledge that climate change is impacting disasters, causing them to be more frequent and more intense, and young people’s futures are disproportionately affected.
What we mean by disasters: fires, storms, floods, heatwaves, drought; any ‘natural disasters’.
Emergency management
Emergency management refers to different actions to respond to disasters and support communities to recover from them.
Our aim
We are aiming to develop a training that supports emergency management workers to practice more accessible and inclusive disaster resilience.
Emergency management workers are people who work in services and agencies that prepare for and respond to disasters.
In the workshops, you will give feedback on training activities, shape the focus of the training and help narrow the scope based on your lived or living experience.
The opportunity
We will run three online workshops that will have up to 15 young people (aged 12 – 25) with a diverse range of identities and backgrounds.
You draw on your lived experience, unique perspectives and expertise in these workshops. You will provide input to inform the development of a training. We will explore:
- How have you experienced disasters as a disabled person?
- What is helpful for you when navigating disasters?
- How do you prepare for disasters or emergencies?
- How would you like to be involved preparing or recovering from a disaster or emergency?
- If you could tell emergency management staff/agencies one thing, what would it be?
- Have you been involved in emergency management organisations? Why/why not?
Three workshops will be held on Zoom, on
- Wednesday 8 April, 5:30pm – 7:30pm
- Wednesday 15 April, 5:30pm – 7:30pm
- Wednesday 22 April, 5:30pm – 7:30pm
A social worker will attend the workshop to support the group’s mental health.
Child Safety & Support
YACVic is a child safe organisation. By attending these events, you agree to join us in our commitment to child safety.
About you
To participate, you will be:
- A young person living in Victoria
- Aged between 12 – 25 years old
- Keen to share your experience navigating disasters, your disability or both
- Passionate about including disabled young people in emergency management and disasters resilience
What will you get out of this opportunity?
This is a voluntary opportunity.
You will be offered a $100 volunteer payment for your active participation in each workshop. You can choose for this to be paid by direct bank transfer (which usually takes 2-3 weeks) or by electronic gift card (which you’ll usually receive within 3 working days).
During the workshops you may use and develop self-advocacy, listening, empathy, discussion and public speaking skills.
Register Now
To apply for this opportunity, please complete the registration form by Tuesday 24 March 2026.
We may close the opportunity early if all spots get filled.
You can send your answers in an email, as an audio file or as a video (3 mins max), to Finn Stirling (he/him), YACVic’s Youth Participation Officer at FStirling@YACVic.org.au. If your video and/or audio files are too big, you could use a file sharing platform like Dropbox or use a Zip file.
If these options don’t work, please reach out to Finn and we can discuss a solution.
The information you enter in the registration form will only be seen by the team working on this project and will not be shared with other people. Please note, we may give you a call to discuss your application with you further.
If you have any questions about the workshops or want to discuss whether this opportunity is for you, please get in touch with Finn Stirling (he/him), YACVic’s Youth Participation Officer at FStirling@YACVic.org.au or on 0498 145 388. If you'd like help to complete this form, please also reach out to Finn.