Rochester Senior Citizens’ Club has received a grant from the Foundation for Rural Regional Renewal towards rebuilding its op shop.
FRRR has given the club $25,000 to help support ongoing flood recovery efforts in Rochester through its Disaster Resilience and Recovery Fund.
The club will look to use mitigation and hazard assessment principles in the planning and design phase of its Op shop rebuild through the grant.
FRRR disaster resilience and recovery lead Nina O’Brien hopes that the club’s project will showcase its recovery approach and preparedness activities to other community groups.
“The Senior Citizens’ Club’s Op shop is much more than just a local second-hand shop. It acts as a social hub and, importantly, generates approximately $50,000 annually that is distributed for the benefit of the entire town,” she said.
“By planning for future flooding events, the community will be more prepared for, and resilient to, the impacts of disasters, weather events or climate impacts.
“This project is a great example of how disaster-affected communities can plan and design and ‘build back better’ infrastructure to mitigate known and increasing disaster risks.”
The club was founded in 1966, recently celebrating their 58th birthday with an op shop fashion show, and hosts activities and programs to improve health, wellbeing and social connectedness in older members of the community.
Its op shop is entirely run by 15 volunteers, who will partner with the Resilient Building Council to develop skills to understand and assess the new building’s flood risk.
The broader community can also build their knowledge and understanding of these mitigation practices and learn to assess hazards using the Resilient Building Council’s resilience rating tool.