Surf Talk Episode 9 - Member Development
Surf Talk host, Ross Smith, is joined by Georgia Brazenall, the Head of Club and Member Development at Surf Life Saving SA.
Club and Member Development is responsible for ensuring that all of SLSSA’s clubs are engaged and satisfied in order to have longevity in the volunteering movement, and that everyone feels like they belong. The team looks after inclusion, governance and compliance, while also running development camps with youth, community-based programs such as Parnggi Yarluwar Porlar (PYP) for First Nations People, and more recently initiatives along the Murray River, including Rippers.
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Hi, I'm Ross Smith and welcome to Surf Talk, Surf Life -Saving South Australia's
podcast. Every couple of weeks, we release new episodes on different topics. And on
the way, you'll learn a lot about Surf Life -Saving. We're going to introduce some
amazing people, talk to club members and their achievements, and some outstanding
rescues and everything in between. Once again, welcome to Surf Talk, I'm Ross Smith.
Today's podcast is proudly sponsored by Surf Life Savings South Australia's Commercial
Training Department. We'll hear a bit more about the training department later on in
this program. Our special guest today is Georgia Brosnell. Georgia is the head of
club and member development. She wears many hats in the Surf Life Savings
Organization and excited to have her here today. Welcome, Georgia. - Thank you, Ross.
- People probably don't know much about what you do, So tell us a bit about
yourself, Georgia, and what your day looks like in your gold. Yeah,
thank you. Development in surf lifesaving, which is my portfolio, is quite broad and
diverse, which means you never know what's going to happen each day, which makes the
job very interesting. But a short summary is that club and member development,
We are responsible for ensuring that all of our clubs are sustainable and healthy
and that the members within those clubs are engaged and satisfied so that we can
have longevity in our volunteering movement and that everyone feels like they belong
as well. So we look after inclusion, we look after governance and compliance with
our clubs. We run development camps to engage the youth and keep them involved.
And we do an array of other things as well. So you just touched on some of them.
So let's go through the list and see how we go with some of your many hats that
you wear. I just don't know how you bit it in the end of the day. I'm sure you
work after hours, weekends, sometimes. And I know you've got a adult in the camp
next week. So that means you'll be away all week and stuff with these guys, is
that right? - Yeah, absolutely. We've got our youth camp next week. So that one's a
three day two night camp that we hold down at Victor Harbour. So we've got nearly
30, 14 and 15 year old members from across the state and they're gonna take part
in leadership activities and fun activities like an amazing race. And it's their
first time that they'll be able to pop their head out of club land and actually
meet each other from different clubs and form some friendships. - I bet they enjoy
that. - Yeah, they do. Yeah. - Yeah, that sounds like good fun. So I'll put
something about your program called the PYP project that you're on. And it's to do
with First Nations people, Jellie, about the impact on the First Nations community
and what that program's about. - Yeah, so the Pangea Yaloa Polar Program, which means
water ocean kids in Naranjali. This project has just completed so we spent two years
on it. We had two cohorts of 100 First Nations children age 5 to 12 completing two
terms of swimming lessons at a pool who were our partners in the project and then
completing a season of nippers at one of the corresponding surf lifesaving clubs. And
it's had an amazing effect on our volunteer base and our clubs who were involved in
the project. And we've had some really great feedback from the families who were
involved as well. Historically, our membership base only had under 1 % Aboriginal or
Torres Strait Islander members, and that's not reflective of our broader population in
Australia. And so this project has doubled that percentage within our membership base
and so I think our clubs are feeling as though they have been able to welcome new
communities who might not have always been involved in their clubs and participants,
some participants have found their new sport and a love for the ocean and others
have been able to gain a lot of new confidence in aquatic environments, both at the
pool and at the club at Surf Life -Saving. - So the PYP program, is that designed
for metropolitan people or regional? How does that work? - Yeah, yeah. So this one
was a metropolitan club involvement. So we had clubs as far north as North Haven,
Surf Life -Saving Club and as far south as Gore, Surf Life -Saving Club. Well, so
it's pretty broad for metropolitan. Is there plans to run future programs sort of in
more regional areas? Yeah, we're looking to expand it to places like Waila where we
have a surf lifesaving club and Murray Bridge, which is a newly formed surf
lifesaving club and because these have high populations of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander families and these are the places where because it's local to these
families that we might be able to attract more members and hopefully share the love
of surf lifesaving. Another activity, another role that certain people may not have
thought of that doing that. I mean, just a general population sometimes don't think
so about being a surf lifesaver or being involved in surf lifesaving. So any
programs we could do, whether it's for Indigenous community, whether it's for anyone
around, we need to have these programs in place. It's a great idea. - Yeah, it's
great. And we're hoping that it will expand further. Now that we do have some First
Nations families in our clubs, they'll be able to invite their friends and family as
well to join our clubs. Because obviously anyone who wants to join a club, it's
much easier and more inviting when you already know people and you've got people to
lean on when you're in a new environment. - That's often often our people come in
anyway. So I'm involved in that. Come on in. Yeah, it's such a great program. I
suppose we're talking about the impact for First Nations people in surf lifesaving. I
know you're heavily involved in the reconciliation action plan. So I think we've gone
from reflect to innovate. I'm not sure. Can you tell me a bit about where we are
with that program? Yeah, absolutely. So we've just completed our reflect reconciliation
action plan. So there's four iterations of a reconciliation action plan.
Reflect is the first one. So it's all in the name. So Reflect is where we've spent
time having a look at all of our processes, having a look at our membership base,
for example, seeing where we could be better at including and promoting First Nations
people and businesses in what we do and actually, for example,
procuring our office supplies from an Aboriginal owned business, things like that.
So really taking a stock take on where we're at in our reconciliation journey. And
then we've completed all of the actions in this first plan. And so now it's time
to draft the second iteration, which is called innovate. And this is all in the
name as well. This is where the rubber hits the road, where we have to start
actually implementing the changes and trying to fill the gaps that we've identified
in that first stage on our journey of reconciliation. So I suppose the first stage
reflect was like a gap analysis almost. Correct, yeah. Looking at where we just
haven't filled those gaps and, you know, inclusivity programs and how we need to
now, and then we need to, like I said, as a rubber, it's the road. How do we do
that? How do we achieve that as an organization? Absolutely, yeah. And throughout
both the Pangea Yalua Paula program and developing our different iterations of our
reconciliation action plan, we've had some amazing support from the Jindu Foundation
who have been our partner in both of those projects. They're an Aboriginal community
controlled not -for -profit and they run some amazing programs for Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander youth. And they have really provided us that support and
advice on this journey and a bit of a sounding board as to where we're at. And
we've learned lots of lessons along the way, having conversations with Jindu
Foundation. - They know the road. - They do, yes. - That's great. So another hat you
wear is Environmental Advisor Committee. I think you head that up. What are some of
the key goals or wings wings and how's it going so far, the environmental
sustainability in Surf Life Saving South Australia? Yeah, so we have a number of
advisory committees here at Surf Life Saving SA and they make recommendations to our
board. So as part of our governance structure, our key priorities are covered by
these advisory committees. So my portfolio looks after our Development Advisory
Committee and they make a lot of recommendations on some of the things we've already
talked about and some other things we'll talk about later, but our Environment
Advisory Committee also sits under my portfolio and their role is to advise our
board and our staff on ways that we can be better in the environmental
sustainability space. So some of their goals at the moment, they're really scoping
what their work is going to be. They're looking at maybe ways that we can reduce
our carbon emissions and coming up with a plan to make those reductions in looking
at our operations. So like biofuels and those sort of things? Yeah, absolutely. And
just starting by measuring what kind of emissions we produce in all of the different
scopes directly and indirectly, you know, people traveling to carnivals, how many
people use their car to get to a carnival that's quite far away and the fuel that
we use in an IRB, for example, or even the electricity produced that we use at
head office as well. So they're really in this scoping phase at the moment and
we've got kind of a newer group of people who are looking ahead at what our
journey will be, but this started as an amazing working group from the grassroots
who, 10 or 15 years ago, came together to start educating our members about our
role as surf lifesavers in natural water environments where we But really the
custodians of that environment to make sure that we're keeping it safe and protecting
it for the future as well. So they, an initiative from the previous working group
was to bring out bins on patrol, which sounds a bit obvious now and it's
commonplace, it's been around for 10 years, but the each, there wasn't a place for
members of the public to dispose of rubbish or the patrolling members unless they
walked right up to the footpath at the top of the beach. And that's just where
they all are. There's sort of nothing on the beach and I go walking most mornings
with my wife along the beach and we're often picking up sadly, picking up other
people's rubbish and putting them in the bins at the top but having people aware
that the bins are at you know between the flags area where the surf lifesavers are
makes sense. It's saddens me every time I see rubbish on the beach. I think, "Guys,
come on, it's our environment. It's our place of fun. Just pick it up and take it
home, but it's a thing we've got to be aware of." And now we've got something. So
adding those things to our scope of what we do, that's really good. It's clever.
It makes sense. And like I said, as well as we are to look after people, keep
them safe, to rescue people, environment is a massive impact on our organization. We
want to be there for a long time and have those beautiful beaches, particularly in
South Australia, we want them there forever. We don't want to have to go, we can't
go naked, so polluted. Exactly right. And our club members across Australia are the
forefront of the changes that climate change is bringing. You only have to take one
look at the Gold Coast after Cyclone Alfred and a number of those surf lifesaving
clubs along the coast have had to do repairs and maintenance and address the
changing beach environment and here in South Australia now we've got these algal
blooms due to the higher water temperature which affects swimmers down on our south
coast. So we really do see the effects of climate change at the forefront and so
we do really feel we have a responsibility to be preventing and hopefully reversing
if we can get enough momentum with our society. We all know the science. We all
understand the issues. It's great that an organisation as large,
I guess, I could say, of self -life -saving are dedicated to assisting and helping
the environment. And if we can, like I said, hopefully turn the clock back a bit,
because we definitely need that. Absolutely. George, thank you for that. We're going
to take a short break. And when we come back, Before we come back, we're going to
hear about our commercial training department. But I want to talk to you about the
Rippers program. It sounds like a fantastic initiative. We'll be back soon.
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So welcome back Georgia. Let's get into a bit more of surf talk. So if anyone
wants to contact Surf Lifesaving and do some first aid training or pool lifeguard or
boat licences training, myriad of training courses we do, go to surflifesaving .com .au
/courses and please feel free to book into one of our courses. So Georgia,
tell us a bit about Rippers and I suppose after that tell us a bit about, you
mentioned before, the Murray Bridge Lifesaving Club. It's very exciting. So what's
happening in that space? It's a very exciting space Ross. So, as of a couple of
weeks ago, we officially, our board officially endorsed the Murray Bridge Lifesaving
Club to be our 23rd affiliated club in South Australia.
And you might notice the change of wording. It's a Lifesaving Club as opposed to a
Surf Lifesaving Club. So this club is actually based on the Murray River in Murray
Bridge and this group of volunteers have worked really hard over two years to put
all of the measures in place and make sure that they've got a strong governance
structure, they've got a list of interested volunteers, they've got support from the
council, they're supporting running a successful program, Ripper's program which I'll
talk about in a minute and they've been able to achieve probationary affiliation with
us which is very exciting and their next steps are to continue to grow and expand
so that they can achieve full affiliation. But this is all arisen from a project
that we started a couple years ago as well called the Rippers Program and this is
a program run in Murray Bridge, Redmark and Lake Bonney and it's been a number of
six -week and eight -week programs which teach basic water safety skills and basically
an adapted Nippers program but to the river environment for children age 5 to 13.
So Rippers is a play on words it's Nippers in the river and it's been a really
catchy name across these communities and everyone's really caught on. The community
response has been incredible. Families, we've had families say, "Oh, my daughter
doesn't play any other sports, "but she really loves this one," you know, and they
really enjoy the fact that it's not just active recreation. Kids are learning really
important life skills and survival skills and even those early chain of survival
skills and teaching how to rescue someone or to be able to provide life -saving
support if they were to go into cardiac arrest, for example. - It's a great
initiative and it's fantastic from an organisation now that we're moving from so just
surfed and we've been doing it for a while but these initiatives will strengthen our
inland water support. You know, people unfortunately get in trouble and drown in all
sorts of water all over the place. It's, now we're experts in our field along the
surf, it's about time we sort of moved into that sort of regional river waterways
and lakes and dams and the like. And having a life -saving club in Murray Bridge is
sensational. It's just, do you see in the future maybe there'll be more sort of
affiliated life -saving clubs in these heavily riveted and heavily populated tourist
areas like that? Absolutely. No one should drown in any piece of water and everyone
should have the opportunity to be able to have fun in the water can be so fun,
especially the river, but unless you're safe, you're not going to be able to have
that opportunity because you need to be able to be safe to recreate there. So I
think as we move forward, this will continue to grow and there's increasing
opportunities in our swift water a flood rescue space as well. So we have a few of
our members who are trained in swift water rescue and one of them actually assisted
up at the Cyclone Alfred recovery when there was flooding. So we really see this,
this place as a center where this kind of rescue skill and capability can actually
grow. I was reading something the other day about capability and I noticed that, you
know, our volunteer base is strong and keeps growing. And there's lots of reasons
behind that. And they look at other rescue organizations, sometimes they struggle to
get people or have a full complement of people. So if we can be a backup or a
resource or even part of those other agencies to assist with our strong, very well
educated and trained volunteer base, it's a no brainer, isn't it really? Oh yeah,
absolutely. And Most of all, it's a community place where people can make friendships
and they can gather weekly over summer to Have fun and learn new skills and be
rescue ready. Yeah, it's terrific, isn't it? So I suppose talking about places to
gather Your the club development side of it, you know everything from you cover
everything from governance to culture So what are some of the most challenging things
facing clubs or that you find with clubs that you are trying to build through your
connections? Yeah, I think as an organisation, people will have heard across all of
these episodes how broad our scope is and how much we actually do at a state
level. But you wouldn't be surprised to find that at the club level,
it's the same, except it's entirely run by volunteers. So I think the biggest
challenge is actually our volunteers taking on so much and doing it so well but
needing, sometimes needing the support when they step into these new leadership roles
and they're dealing with an array of stakeholders, an array of members who they're
trying to keep satisfied so that they can retain them in the club. Our biggest
challenge is making sure that these leaders are feeling secure, competent and
confident and supported in their roles. It would be a tricky one because I suppose
every club has their own sort of constitution, all a little bit different. Some of
the systems are probably different. I was just chatting to one of the last having
members before came about it, you know, which is a great thing. We're sort of
driven volunteer upwards, not sort of head office downwards, which is fantastic. But
that sometimes brings it's complications with support and trying to get everyone
there. People volunteer for these roles and I suppose you're one of your big jobs
to try and offer that sort of ground of support and systems in place to help,
well, maintain new people coming to Club Captains or whatever their role may be.
Yeah, developing all of those members into those roles and helping them realise that
they are capable and that they have the tools to be able to undertake those roles,
often people's roles at their surf lifesaving club can be very different to their
professional life, which is really beneficial for them because it's a great outlet.
But at the same time, there's a whole lot of skill development that they are now
encountering, which is amazing, but they need to be supported so that they're not
burnt out and that it's enjoyable. Yeah, take on the role, but you get that sort
of background support. And I suppose also the other way around, sometimes these
roles, particularly for younger people doing the higher level roles in a club, help
in their career as well. They move on to careers go, you know, I've managed people
of, I've made decisions and I've looked after infrastructure and you know, they can,
it's such a great pathway. Yeah, absolutely. Our young people are so employable. They
have such amazing transferable skills from so many activities that they undertake at
their local club. So I've got a question about the leadership camp and we just
talked about it. So can you tell us a bit more and unpack a bit more about the
development camps for the under 16 and 17 year olds? Yeah, so we run two camps a
year. So next week we're running our under 14 and 15 camp, which is really fun, a
fun couple of days with our young members who are really making friendships and
understanding why they should stay in surf lifesaving after finishing nippers. But
then we also run an under -16 and under -17 development camp, which is a five -day,
four -night camp that we run at the end of the year in December, and they actually
achieve across the five days their certificate three in public safety, aquatic rescue.
So a bronze medallion, you might know, is a certificate too in public safety. So
this certificate three actually attracts safe points. So a lot of our young people
who come on this camp are looking to be able to make it count for their schooling,
which is amazing. But alongside these courses that they undertake across the five
days that we do leadership training and personality styles and they really get worked
quite hard, they get quite exhausted by the end of it and they form really close
bonds because we only take away a small group on this camp. So it's really a bit,
there's a lot of space for that relationship development again across different clubs
who with people they might not have interacted with before. Yeah and to sort of
life skills You just can't get, you know, you learn, I would say in life, you
learn things as you go and you learn things, you know, you think, "Oh, I didn't
know about that." If you don't know, you don't know. But to have it at a young
age, like young 16, 17, 14, that sort of leadership mentoring and explaining what
it's all about, personality traits, managing conflict, you know, that stuff, you don't
get anywhere else. There's no one else that go, "Let me teach you that," You know,
you might learn a bit if you're maybe with an AFL club or other sports clubs, but
it seems we're really deep into this and it's such a great idea. Yeah, it's amazing
and they have great fun because some of the courses they're undertaking, they do
their silver medallion, aquatic rescue, so they're jumping off rocks together, they're
facing their fears, they're going snorkeling, but at the same time, they don't
realise, but from the start to the end of the week, they really do grow as people.
Yeah, it's a terrific program. So what about Nippers as we move on? I suppose
Nippers is sort of lifeblood of the future of sort of future lifesavers, I guess.
So what goes into supporting clubs to live this program well? And how do you keep
it fun and sort of safe and inclusive, I guess? Yeah, so we support our clubs.
They really do run the Nippers program themselves. They are pretty amazing. Each club
sort of has a different flavour of Nippers but from a state level our job is to
make sure that the curriculum is sound, that the administration is competent and that
all of the children are safe. So we look after all of the child safe processes
with our clubs and we support clubs with developing their people to be able to run
the Nippers program. It's the Nippers program is not a drop and run, so a lot of
the parents who bring their children are involved and a lot of them end up becoming
volunteers in the program and running an age group or maybe they're cooking the
barbecue or maybe they're providing the water safety because we can't have children
swimming in the ocean without a number of people also watching over them. So it's
really a whole family activity and so our job is to be able to support clubs to
bring in new parents who might come into this and see what a huge amazing movement
it is but also they may get overwhelmed with the responsibility and the commitment
but it's about making them see how amazing it is and falling in love with it
because then they just drive it themselves once once they're hooked. Well, I see
that I said often the family activities at some of the clubs you know the whole
the kids come down to nippers and I say kids of all ages and then the family get
involved and it's great what a great often on Saturday mornings it's a whole family
thing and like to then get involved in other programs and it's a great community I
think that's why surf seems to have a longevity of people staying as patrol members
or in the organization because of that community feel? - You're exactly right. And
you see later on after the Nippers program where parents have now become involved,
you can see two or three generations on one patrol as the children get older.
So often their parents might gain some qualifications along the way and all of a
sudden their child's turn 14 and wants to get their applications to patrol and they
all end up on a Sunday volunteering together, which is it's an amazing sick thing
to see. It is amazing. And yeah, just, just watching the growth of people, I love
it. And look, we're such a strong brand. I went with the second most noticed,
trusted brand in Australia, what's the first one is it?
RFDS, Royal Flying Doctor Service, they can have it. They're - Yeah, they are
amazing, yeah. No, it's terrific to see some of these programs involved. I think the
last thing I wanna talk about is you're involved in members feedback and
satisfaction. What have you learned about what keeps volunteers engaged and passionate
about surf lifesaving? - Oh yeah, so-- - It's a big one. - Yeah, surf lifesaving New
South Wales is doing some amazing work in cultural leadership. And one of the
initiatives is the Member Satisfaction survey which is now national. So we roll that
out in our state in South Australia and this survey, a number of our members will
complete it and we have a high completion rate which allows us to be able to
provide data back to our clubs about what their members think and how satisfied are
they. What's their intention to stay stay around next and do they intend to leave
and why? What's driving their satisfaction? What's might be driving their intention to
leave as well? So we really have this amazing tool now that we can respond to to
make sure that our members are satisfied and they do stay because we do invest so
much into our members in the training and education and keeping them engaged that We
have some really valuable personnel and we want them to stay around. But we also
want this surf lifesaving to be a culture and a place of belonging. So the work
that we're doing now is people really feel satisfied at surf lifesaving when they
feel like they belong, when they feel like there's not too much red tape and it's
easy to do their role, when they feel their expectations of them are really clear
and then they feel like they have trust in their leaders and their leaders are
motivational and really instill capability.
It's capabilities, yeah. And inspiring in some cases as well, seeing other people in
those positions. And it's what a great tool to sort of measure satisfaction. I mean,
even in workplaces, that's a difficult thing. So I can imagine across volunteers
that'd be even more difficult, but it's great to have that tool. It's great we're
initiating ideas and concepts like this. Incredible organization. So I suppose lastly
to finish off, your portfolio has loads of moving parts. So what keeps you inspired
in your role? What keeps you getting out of bed every day? Oh, this one's easy.
It's just how much goodwill, our organization is powered by.
It stounds me every day how many hours our volunteers put in and our staff put in
because they care so much about keeping this movement going and protecting our
community. And I just think that inspires me every that I'm always speaking to
someone who's had a milestone or a personal development or they've done an amazing
initiative for other members. And it's just that sense of community. It doesn't
matter where you go, in South Australia or Australia, if you meet another clubby,
you immediately become friends. Something in common and friends. I was last year in
Rundle Mall and I was doing something with the Council of Ambulance Authorities on a
simple CPR and someone from Sydney was down, "Oh, I'm a sort of lost over city."
And we're just chatting away. I was like, "We're like friends, it was hilarious."
Like I said, and they had to come over to the stand 'cause he saw us there with
other agencies and went, "Oh, get out of Sydney and I'm at this club." And it was,
yeah, that's that comradeship around the country, which is just quite unique, isn't
it? - Yeah, and it's a mutual understanding of the values that you have. We all
have very strong values of being community -minded and service. Absolutely. That's
fantastic. George, it's been great speaking to you. We're nearly out of time. And I
really appreciate your time to do this podcast, because I know you're absolutely flat
out. And thank you for the great work you do. I bet you sometimes it's sort of
thankless. You're not meeting for that video, but thank you so much for what you
do. So I appreciate you being here today. Thanks, Ross. So thanks for listening
everyone. Once again if you want to learn more about surf lifesaving go to surf
lifesavingsa .com .au and if you like the podcast please subscribe and go to our feed
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