News

27/04/2023

Fundamental RCC training helping with snowy valley disaster resilience

Riverina Community College (RCC) and the Resilient Towns Initiative have joined forces to upskill and train more than 350 Snowy Valley region residents since November 2021.

Inspired by disasters including bushfire and COVID-19, the Resilient Towns Initiative, which is funded by the NSW Government (Regional NSW) through the Bushfire Local Economic Recovery Fund, supports community-led disaster resilience, helping build community capacity to deal with disasters – whenever and wherever they may occur.

RCC has provided fundamental training to boost the employment options and workplace skills of local residents. This has included courses ranging from first aid, responsible service of alcohol, responsible conduct of gambling, white cardand more.

“The purpose of this is to not only strengthen the skills of people who live in this region and help them boost their employment prospects, but also to create new job opportunities,” Resilient Towns Project Officer Chris Blake said.

"Black summer bushfires and other natural disasters have had a big impact on our region, so we thought that it was important to do everything we could to learn from such life-changing events.

"We have worked really strongly with Riverina Community College, who have been great to deal with and a lot of course participants have been very complimentary."

NSW Government ACE Funding has been accessed by RCC to deliver this training free of charge.

RCC has recently become part of The VERTO Group, and its CEO, Ron Maxwell, said helping local communities was something the organisation remained committed too.

“We are not-for-profit, and our goal is to positively transform the lives of individuals and communities, through training and employment,” he said.

"The people in the Snowy Valley region, like many Australians, have had a really tough run over the last couple of years, so I’m proud we have been able to support such an important initiative that will provide people with life-long skills and resources that will help boost their employability."

For more information about the Resilient Towns Initiative, please visit their Facebook page here. For more information about RCC’s range of short course options, please visit www.riverinacc.edu.auor phone 1800 000 212.