“A shovel or a shopping cart”: lessons from ten years of disaster response by a student-led volunteer group

Abstract

Recent years have seen growing interest in enabling volunteers to play a more pronounced role in disaster response, and yet efforts to systematically analyse this crisis volunteer action, particularly among young people, have been surprisingly limited. This study examines the case of the Student Volunteer Army (SVA) in Aotearoa New Zealand, a student-led group which over the space of a decade has responded to multiple disasters, including earthquakes, floods, fires, a terrorist attack and the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on in-depth interviews, our analysis compares the practices adopted by the SVA in response to these different crises and identifies how members and supporters of the group have come to understand its capabilities, limitations, and conditions for effective operation. We present a framework of cross-cutting lessons of “why”, “who”, “when”, “what” and “how” and demonstrate the ways they have been built upon for each new disaster mobilisation. In distilling, the key lessons of a youth-led crisis volunteer group that has mobilised for a spectrum of disasters, this paper contributes to theoretical understandings of how groups at a local level learn after sequential disasters, and the conditions and considerations that enable such groups to effectively—and repeatedly—“meet a need” in disaster response.

A crisis volunteer ‘sleeper cell’: An emergent, extending and expanding disaster response organisation

“…In discussing these expectations in the immediate aftermath of disaster, some interviewees reflected that with time and organisational maturity the SVA had become more comfortable balancing expectations—particularly those from the media and the public—with realistic and appropriate responses (see also Carlton et al, 2021). Interviewees spoke of learning ‘to step back from [the pressure] in some way’ (Respondent 27) and in some cases how to ‘say “no”’ (Respondent 27).…”

“…In the decade since its establishment, the SVA has gone on to undertake activities beyond the disaster context in which it was formed (for discussion see Carlton et al, 2021). At the end of 2010 (between the major earthquake events) the group formalised into a student club affiliated with the University of Canterbury Students' Association (the SVA Club) to put into place an aspiration long‐held by some of the team for a volunteer‐focused club on campus.…”

“…More recently, the SVA responded to terrorist attacks on two mosques in Christchurch in March 2019, as well as the COVID‐19 pandemic lockdowns in 2020–2021. Through these events, the SVA has had to negotiate relationships with official emergency management authorities (Nissen et al, 2021b), as well as the particular situational, social and cultural circumstances of each event (Carlton et al, 2021). The SVA has also contributed to disaster response internationally, with members sharing their experiences at conferences and assisting other disaster response efforts, including for the earthquake and tsunami in Japan 2011, the hurricane in New York 2012 and the earthquake in Nepal 2015.…”

“…In the decade since its establishment, the SVA has gone on to undertake activities beyond the disaster context in which it was formed (for discussion see Carlton et al, 2021) (Nissen et al, 2021b), as well as the particular situational, social and cultural circumstances of each event (Carlton et al, 2021). The SVA has also contributed to disaster response internationally, with members sharing their experiences at conferences and assisting other disaster response efforts, including for the earthquake and tsunami in Japan 2011, the hurricane in New York 2012 and the earthquake in Nepal 2015.…”

“…The SVA emerged in the aftermath of the Canterbury earthquake sequence of 2010-2011, when the student-led group coordinated an estimated 13-15,000 volunteers to help shovel silt from the streets and residents' properties (Nissen et al, 2021a;Carlton & Mills, 2017;Lewis, 2013;Mutch, 2014). Over the decade since, the SVA has grown into a youth volunteer organisation with national reach, while also mobilising in response to several other disasters, including floods, fires, a terrorist attack and the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant lockdowns (Carlton et al, 2021). The significant impact of the SVA in each of these responses has meant it has featured as a potential blueprint for youth-centred post-disaster civic action (Lewis, 2013;Mutch, 2014) and as a volunteer disaster relief success story (Whittaker et al, 2015).…”