Bloomfield’s Tin Shed, which served as a community hub during the Tropical Cyclone Jasper disaster, will be getting a new kitchen thanks to an extreme weather recovery grant program. Photo: Supplied.
A grant that is helping Bloomfield build a community hub kitchen after the devastation of Tropical Cyclone Jasper is now open again for 2025.
The Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal (FRRR) and Suncorp launched the latest round of grants aimed at supporting community groups in remote, rural and regional Australia to build back better after extreme weather events as part of the Rebuilding Futures program.
Community groups and not-for-profit organisations in regions affected by declared disasters or extreme weather events between 2019 and 2024 are invited to apply for funding to reduce the impact of disasters and prepare for future weather events.
Stream one offers grants up to $20,000 for locally-prioritised recovery or preparedness initiatives that build resilience, while stream two offers grants up to $50,000 to help small, locally-based organisations upgrade small-scale community-owned infrastructure to better withstand the impacts of future disasters.
The Bloomfield River District Residents Association received a $20,000 grant last year to build a kitchen at the Tin Shed.
“The Tin Shed came to be used as a community hub during the 2023 disaster and onto 2024, but there was no kitchen,” secretary Robyn Guedes said.
“There’s a little sink which is nothing to speak of, so we applied for the FRRR grant to install a kitchen that the community can use, so that people who are displaced and don’t have a home, they don’t have to be leaning on other people and making food in other people’s kitchens.”
With the kitchen plans currently going through council approval processes, Ms Guedes encouraged other Cape York groups needing to rebuild and improve after Tropical Cyclone Jasper to apply for the grant.
“They definitely should; I’ve actually spoken to the Rossville group and encouraged them to apply for it,” she said.
“In our application, it was about us having been through the disaster and highlighting the great community need for it.
“Services were springing up inside the tiny Ayton library and there were people on top of each other, so there was really a need to have a community hub, but something that is a bit functional, so it’s something that we want to build on.”
FRRR program manager Danielle Griffin said she hoped to see plenty of applications from Cape York for the current round of funding.
“We were actually surprised we didn’t receive as many grant applications as we thought we would last year,” she said.
“We were a bit concerned that we had the grant round a little bit too early, because we understood that there was still a lot of clean-up going on in the community and people weren’t quite ready.”
Applications for both streams close at 5pm on 3 April.
For more information , including eligibility requirements, visit the FRRR website.
