 CFA is partnered with the Heartwood Centre for Community Youth Development out of Nova Scotia and so they're delivering a series of courses to us as members of CFA that are engaged with youth across the community and we're really there to learn of frameworks and approaches for how we can better approach the youth within our organisation and engage in partnerships that are meaningful to both the youth and ourselves so that we can really as best practice go forward and engage with youth. So the program's goal is to train a set of 20 facilitators that then can go and take the Heartwood framework and approach out into the community and help Brigades across the state really engage with youth on a meaningful level and ideally create a set of resources and training that can be accessed by everyone across the state for all ranges of youth engagement and approaches and your Brigade likely already goes and engages with youth on a number of levels and so really providing the structure and materials for you to be able to do that effectively is a really valuable thing and the fact that CFA is partnering with Heartwood really means that we can take the next step in engaging youth. Heartwood has been a really great package to learn to engage with our youth and why Brigade should do it is actually getting an understanding about the youth in our communities and how we can support them and learn from each other. Their knowledge, their sharing, being able to run certain activities to help us as adults engage with our youth has been such a learning experience for myself and I think we've got a lot to learn from our youth. They're part of our organisation, they're the ones that we need to help us develop moving forward, their skills, their knowledge and just learning from them and Heartwood has given me some skills to be able to do that and to support the Brigades through that time when they want to engage with their youth and their communities. I signed up to do Heartwood because I thought it was a brilliant opportunity to get out and facilitate some training with Brigades in the North West region and get the youth engagement space happening really well there. There's a declining numbers in ageing population within our Brigades in that area so to re-engage and create future leaders from our young people from a young age I feel is very beneficial. I had the opportunity talking to some of our VST members from CFA there of Heartwood Community Youth Engagement there so I really wanted to put myself out there to be able to engage with that 16 and 17 year old younger members there that often don't have the chance there to find out what they actually want. Increase my skills with facilitation there to actually find out some of the things that they want to do with the Brigades and also enhance the Brigade, the BMTs as well there to make sure that they are viable for the future there. Our younger members of that 16 and 17 year old cohort have amazing skills, amazing that they can bring two Brigades and their communities as well. The Heartwood Training that we are getting underway will help our younger members engage better with our older members as well as the other way around so it's not just that the youth don't want to interact we want to help the older people understand how to engage with those youth as well. The Heartwood Training I would recommend to any Brigade it's a great way of being able to show the Brigade how they can interact with the youth those 16 and 17 year olds and how they can even recruit and then also be able to maintain those numbers and maintain those new members that they are getting and really help the sustainability of the Brigade. As part of the youth team at HQ at CFA I think it's really valuable that we all have a knowledge of best practice for youth engagement across the state so that when we create research and policy and frameworks for the rest of the organisation we can really take the next meaningful step towards getting all Brigades involved in recruiting and retaining youth both to appreciate the value that they have to CFA now but also for sustainability into the future.