The Bega Valley Business Forum (BVBF) was successful in their application and has secured funding of $250,000 from the NSW Governments Bushfire community recovery and resilience fund.

The project was instigated by the Bega Valley Business Forum who has identified a need for a strong strategic framework that facilitates a tailored roadmap to disaster recovery, future growth and long-term resilience for the  business communities in the South Coast.

The 2019/2020 year has been one of unprecedented hardship for the Bega Valley with the summer bushfires and the global pandemic resulting in major economic loss alongside heartbreaking social and community devastation. Bega Valley’s economy has been more impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and summer bushfires than any other area within regional NSW, with the GDP forecasted to fall by more than $52 million in the June Quarter 2020 compared to the average quarter 2018/2019, anticipating to be the 6th worst LGA impacted amongst Regional NSW. It is with this knowledge that the Bega Valley Business Forum developed the methodology for this grant.

Some of the deliverables under this project include:

• A regional summit with the objective of collaboratively reach priorities for recovery, the summit will provide stimulus and interactive activities for productive discussion that maximises valuable outcomes.
• Workshops and Local Engagement Program: a workshop will be undertaken at each town centre, targeted at local businesses to set a framework for collaboration, recovery, and build long-term commitment and resilience.
• Activation and Resilience Action Plans, implementable actions will be tailored to each town centre, detailing how to tackle priorities for recovery and leverage local opportunities.
• Engagement Report, that will synthesis the outputs of  the towns strategic plans and the outputs of the Regional Summit in a report outlining a broad summary of issues, opportunities and priorities, as well as opportunities and priorities, as well as a recommendation for next steps.

The progress of this project has been good with, Pambula and Bega completing their strategic plans and Eden, Cobargo, Merimbula and Tathra in the process of completing their plans.