Junior leader toolkits and tips

As well as developing our young people, it’s important to build the capability and confidence of our Junior leaders. Junior leaders are the backbone of the Juniors program and it’s important to invest in them as they invest in our young members. The Youth Engagement Working Group has been busy over the past six months developing a suite of resources to develop Junior leaders, support stronger program delivery and create a safer environment for our young members. The Junior Brigade Group Agreement Toolkit helps Junior leaders and Juniors to jointly develop a group agreement for their Junior brigade. The toolkit includes an overview, a facilitation guide, PowerPoint presentation and templates to enable Junior leaders to effectively run the session and create a group agreement for their Junior brigade. The Junior Leader Network Toolkit helps Junior leaders build a local ‘community of practice’ where they can share ideas, build skills and support each other as they develop and deliver the Juniors program. This toolkit facilitates a comprehensive, shared approach to building such networks across the state while still reflecting local perspective. The Disability Inclusion Guide helps build leaders’ knowledge about disability and how to support people with a disability in brigades. Currently there is an ‘Introduction to Disability’ section and a section about autism. To meet the emerging needs of

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our Junior brigades, this guide will continue to be developed to include sections about other disabilities. Three ‘Top 10 tips’ videos were developed because the Junior Leaders’ Forum was postponed due to COVID-19. The key issues addressed by these videos correspond to what Junior leaders thought was important in a recent poll. • Resources for use with Junior brigades (pictured above).

This video covers resources from many different agencies, including CFA, for use with young people. Junior leaders can get creative about how to use them with their own Juniors.

Many of the resources mentioned have online links. • Training for Junior leaders. These training tips are from a variety of sources including CFA’s Learning Hub, Sport

Australia and Disability Awareness. There is something for all levels of experience to help build skills and develop stronger programs. • Involving the wider brigade with Juniors. Junior leaders often tell us how difficult it can be to engage the wider brigade with the Juniors program. This video gives tips on practical, easy ways to do this that will have brigades coming together before you know it. All these new resources can be found on the Members Online youth pages.