This year we ran our AUS/NZ Introductory Course in Canberra at the YWAM base from Nov 20 to December 2. The large property with plenty of outdoor spaces, various buildings, wood piles, bush and trees provided a good space and facilities for our four fearless participants to engage in a variety of activities, scenarios and exercises.
We had a nice compact team of four participants, one member completing her probational phase and four facilitators.
Our participants all had a medical background bringing a lot of experience to the table. This set the bar high for us medically and we were able to build upon these skills already present and bring them into a disaster context. It is a good challenge to learn to apply different skills in this very challenging field of disaster response. We seek to simulate conditions where often only very limited resources are available and where we often need to create our own resources.
Medical response is only one element on our courses and our four participants together with staff did not hesitate to engage themselves in anything whether it was Search and Rescue, Fire suppression, Emotional First Aid or Disaster child care. We had a lot of fun and yet meaningful team activities and team-building exercises, as we understand that a team is like a chain, which is only as strong as it’s weakest link. RescueNet is all about team work and we do all this together building each other up recognising each other’s skills, strengths and weaknesses.
Don’t hesitate to contact us if you are interested to know more and see if one of our future courses would be something for you!
Ilari Makinen
