Andrew McCullough

And now, all our Home Alone dreams come true as we arrive in New York 🗽

A quick trip up to Scotland and the home of golf at St Andrews ⛳️

We had dinner with Melvin Hartley - a UK Churchill Fellow who works for local council and travelled to the US and Europe to research spontaneous volunteering. Great to enjoy UK pub food and some Harry Potter sightseeing 🧙

Before I left the UK I caught up with Dr Jenny Moreno, an academic and someone who has worked closely with spon vols in Chile.

And while in Bournemouth, I had to try the pier to beach zip line 😧

So great to meet with Professor Ilan Kelman - who we interviewed on the podcast a few years ago about the threat of climate change and what this means for communities.

In London we met with Matt Hogan, Deputy Head of London Resilience to understand how the city works with communities during disasters

And a few more photos of the castle where Duncan and I met

It was a real privilege to meet with Professor Duncan Shaw this morning in Manchester, who wrote the international standard on spontaneous volunteering. We both have very similar thoughts - that we need to simplify the process to mobilise communities.

Jake heads back to Australia today - huge thanks for travelling over to Europe and for an awesome couple of weeks!

In Stockholm we met with Anna-Maria and Tomas from the Swedish Civil Defence Association to discuss how they train the community and lead along spontaneous volunteering efforts in response to crises 🇸🇪

Another photo with the team at the Swedish Sea Rescue Society 🛟

Next stop, Stockholm 🇸🇪

And now we’re in Gothenburg - at Swedish Sea Rescue Society HQ. They receive zero government funding and rely on memberships and donors to fund their operations. Volunteers made huge commitments to help boaters in trouble.

An amazing 24 hours spent on the remote sea rescue base at Station Roro with the Swedish Sea Rescue Society

And a few more shots from the road today #Iceland

Today we met with the Súlur team of Landsbjörg (Iceland Search and Rescue) in Akureyri to learn about their impressive capability and how they work with community. 💡 Could community funded organisations foster a greater sense of risk ownership and encourage volunteering?

So many waterfalls

Today’s sights of Iceland

Amazing landscapes in the golden circle 👀

Taking a week off volunteer research to travel around Iceland, starting with snorkelling at Silfra between two tectonic plates. For earthquake research of course.

Team #NSWSES in Reykjavik for the conference this weekend

I spoke at Rescue24 about how NSW SES is better prepared for flood rescue and spontaneous volunteering - but that our desire is actually reducing the need for rescue response through early warnings, planning and engagement with low lying communities.

Made it to Iceland for the Search and Rescue Conference. Promises to be a great few days ahead

Norway 🇳🇴
My bags were delayed, and pretty I was the only person in the entire country walking around in shorts today.

And that’s it for me in Türkiye. Next stop Norway 🇳🇴

It was a real treat to meet with famous Turkish rockstar Haluk Levent and his team today. Levent utilised his public profile for good and founded Ahbap, a NGO which has coordinated hundreds of thousands of volunteers across Türkiye to provide disaster relief to earthquake affected areas.

Insight from today: perhaps we need to set an expectation early that communities will be expected to contribute to the response and recovery efforts. Do we need to clearly communicate this and start a long cultural shift to communities taking greater initiative (like many currently do)

Guess what they are cooking on Turkish Masterchef… kebabs!

And here’s a few shots from around Istanbul

Today I spent time with Mesut Bilgili who founded an organisation Life After Disaster and runs a community centre in Hatay. He lost 11 members of his extended family in the Türkiye-Syria earthquake.