| Recipient: | Team Rubicon Canada |
|---|---|
| Project: | National Training and Community Engagement |
| Province: | Ontario |
| Period: | Fiscal year 2018-2019 |
| Funding: | $150,000 |
Overview:
Team Rubicon Canada is a community-based organization that unites the skills and experiences of military Veterans with first responders to rapidly deploy emergency response teams. The National Training and Community Engagement program will increase and sustain Team Rubicon Canada's readiness and organizational capacity to effectively respond to disasters within Canada and abroad.
Project Goals:
There were two main objectives of Team Rubicon Canada’s National Training and Community Engagement Program. The first objective was to build Team Rubicon’s ‘readiness to respond’ by providing volunteers with strategic training opportunities that would give them the skills and abilities needed to conduct effective disaster response operations. The second objective was to provide opportunities to Canadian Veterans to continue serving communities, and, through this continued service, help them to regain a sense of purpose, community, and identity that is often lost after leaving the military.
Project Activities:
Team Rubicon Canada’s planned activities for this program were designed to increase capacity, providing Veterans with training opportunities and community service projects aimed to better equip them to help their communities prepare, respond and recover from disasters. They held 21 training events and 16 community engagement events.
Project Results:
By December 2019, Team Rubicon Canada’s total number of volunteers more than doubled, going from 553 to 1209. Team Rubicon Canada was able to accomplish this due to the additional training opportunities and community service projects that were made possible with funding. As Team Rubicon Canada’s volunteer numbers increased, so too did its deployment-ready capacity. Prior to receiving funding, Team Rubicon Canada had a total of 27 volunteers with the capabilities and skills required to deploy on a Team Rubicon Canada operation. With funding from The Veteran and Family Well-Being Fund (VFWF), Team Rubicon Canada was able train an additional 130 volunteers, each one with the knowledge and certifications necessary to be disaster response leaders. Team Rubicon Canada now has the ability to respond to humanitarian crises and large scale disasters within Canada and abroad. In April 2019, Team Rubicon Canada launched a full operation in response to the Ottawa Valley floods, and in September, completed its first large scale international operation in response to Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas.