Girls Fire and Resilience Program Evaluation

As an inclusion strategy and resiliency education activity, the program has much to offer especially in the context of developing the capacity of young women to respond to, recover from and rebuild after accidents, emergencies and disasters. Across Australia much is being done to support communities and individuals to work together in these kinds of resilient and effective ways. The interest of the National Australia Bank (NAB) in this program exemplifies this and should be commended.
These programs represent a significant investment of both private and public money, human resources and the diverting of agency expertise (i.e., funding constituted from public donations, government support and private investment, resources from emergency service). Without reliable and quantifiable evidence of the impact of resilience-based programming, claims about its impact will remain largely unsubstantiated and substantial resources will be investment without understanding the true value of this investment, or how systems and processes might be improved.
An independent evaluation of program goals will serve to provide assurances around the value of the program and inform cycles of improvement so the return for communities can be further enhanced and grown with confidence.