The Centre of Excellence: Young People & Disasters (the Centre) will be presenting a workshop at the 2025 Emergency Management Conference, hosted by the Emergency Services Foundation. 

Where can our young people take us? is a youth-focused disaster resilience workshop aiming to provide an opportunity for young people involved in emergency management and disaster resilience across Victoria to come together, share ideas, build trust and expand networks. 

The session will be facilitated by five young people, supported by staff at the Centre. Participants will learn how to improve youth participation in the emergency management and disaster resilience sector, shift mindsets in the community and how to platform and elevate the voices of young people in your community. 

2025 Emergency Management Conference Workshop Details

When: 29 July 2025 

Time: 1:30pm (NB: this is the time of the Where can our young people take us? workshop)  

Where: The Pullman Albert Park, Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong / Boon Wurrung 

Click here to register for the Conference 

The workshop will include both sharing of lived experience through narrative storytelling, and small group work addressing systemic, and organisational barriers to greater youth participation in the emergency management and disaster sectors. Lived experience quotes and narratives will come from young people (both those in the room and those facilitating the workshop) The workshop will be broken up into three parts: 

Part 1: storytelling/reflection of experiences as a young person and exploring the barriers that have been faced in the emergency management sector. 

Part 2: continuum activity with audience, facilitated by young people. Audience invited to share their experiences based on where they stand on the continuum. Group will explore the barriers they may have faced as young people, and why others may not have faced those barriers. 

Part 3: small group discussions about the barriers raised through storytelling and proposed solutions. Will be fed back to main group with next steps brainstormed. 

We hope to see you there!