Evaluating the Girls on Fire: Fire and Resilience Program – FINAL REPORT

The Girls on Fire Resilience program has been developed as an education initiative that inspires young women to pursue volunteering and career opportunities, and empowers them to take an active role in building community safety and resilience. The Program represents 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 services). Without reliable and quantifiable evidence of the impact of resilience-based programming, claims about its impact will remain largely unsubstantiated and resources invested without understanding the true value of this investment, or how systems and processes might be improved. To fill this gap researchers at Monash University were commissioned to conduct an independent evaluation in order to explore the impact of the program and inform cycles of improvement so the return for communities and investors can be further enhanced and grown with confidence. The results suggest that the Program has the potential to evolve into an initiative to develop the individual and community resilience of participants. Overall, the findings of this study indicate support to continue exploring the impact of the Girls Fire and Resilience program in supporting the development of individual and community resiliency strategies to mitigate the impact of disastrous climatic events in Australia.</p