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Why local knowledge is critical in crisis
Who will you turn to when the ‘experts’ can’t get to you?
Crisis is a tricky beast. While one may be easily convinced it’s a chaotic, yet manageable set of circumstances that can be somehow shoved into a uniform set of solutions — actually — it’s not. Unless, that is the set of solutions are appropriately positioned to account for a set of variables that may, or may not be present in any given situation.
What?
Let’s take one experience I had during the bushfires as an example… I was volunteering in a community I knew well, I could see the other volunteers were growing increasingly tired, and it didn’t appear anything was going to change without some form of intervention. So, I did what any business credentialed individual would — established a roster, barked some commands, encapsulated it all on a beautifully formatted piece of paper and left the building. Because rosters and well executed instructions work right? That night I printed the roster, shut down my computer and left with a righteous smile on my face.
I’d saved they day.
Imagine my surprise when I returned to the centre the following day to discover the same tired faces staring (or was it glaring?) at me with eyeballs now hanging down their cheeks. I was gobsmacked. How was it that the allocated rest had not…
