Gaining 'authority to operate': student-led emergent volunteers and established response agencies in the Canterbury earthquakes.

There is growing expectation that local volunteers will play a more integrated role in disaster response, yet emergent volunteer groups are often 'outsiders' to crisis management. Questions have been raised, therefore, about how emergent groups can forge relationships with established response agencies. This paper analyses how the Student Volunteer Army, as an emergent group, gained 'authority to operate' after the earthquakes in Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2010-11. It traces how the volunteers accrued authority through multiple sources of permission and credibility and demonstrates the possibility for established response agencies and emergent groups to generate impactful and mutually supportive relationships. However, the analysis also points to two interrelated tensions that can arise, regarding the terms by which emergent groups are recognised, and the 'distance' considered necessary between the two parties. The discussion considers the implications for inclusiveness, risk, and responsibility of further integrations of emergent volunteers in disaster response.

The Student Volunteer Army: a 'repeat emergent' emergency response organisation.

This paper seeks to contribute to understanding of the factors associated with an effective emergent emergency response organisation and to provide new insights into this understudied area. It examines, through an analysis of a range of textual resources, the emergence and re-emergence of the Student Volunteer Army (SVA) during the devastating earthquakes in Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2010-11. This evaluation is conducted in relation to the four key features of an effective emergency response organisation: adaptability; direction; leadership; and communication. In addition, the paper aims to further understanding of 'emergency entrepreneurship' and thus of the values and strategies that underpin social entrepreneur organisations in times of normalcy. The paper concludes that the unique position of the SVA as a 'repeat emergent' emergency response organisation enabled it to innovate continually and to improve repeatedly its systems, relationships, and image, such that it exhibited features common to emergent and established emergency response organisations.

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

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.