Today marks the 1st anniversary of the Australian First Responder Foundation.
A spark was lit when Louise was visiting the Police Treatment Centre in Scotland – “we could do this in Australia”. Louise was working on her Churchill Fellowship – investigating approaches to Peer Support for First Responders internationally. On returning to Australia and completing the report Louise, Wade, Graham and Sue got together and established the Australian First Responder Foundation and the AFRF Board. Despite the difficulties of these times, the group set about building a charity organisation, writing a constitution, registering the charity, working out how the AFRF will operate, raising funds and membership.
Starting from scratch, the AFRF has now built this website, developed the FRESHER course materials, and has raised sufficient funds to run two FRESHER weekend retreats in November (having endured a delay due to COVID restrictions). We hope that there will be more to come as we apply for more funding and call upon the community to support our activities. Others have joined us and are guiding us, helping build resources and community contacts. This has been an enormous amount of work for a few. You can get involved and join us and help in many different ways; we have some special roles we are recruiting for – so why not consider how you could assist.
So thank you to every one who has assisted us in getting us this far. We hope we will grow so much more in the coming 12 months and truly make a difference to the lives of our emergency first responders, and our communities. We are sooo looking forward to the next 12months.
