It has been operating for the last 20 years and aims to primarily engage with youth in sustainability and conservation learning adventures with a focus on permaculture design principles.

The Centre also provides community workshops and courses for adults and has a unique and strong focus on permaculture design and renewables education.

Like a range of other projects on the NSW Far South Coast, The Crossing has been successful in securing $947,803 from the Bushfire Local Economic Recovery Fund (BLERF) towards a range of initiatives with a focus on building fire resilience and sharing knowledge with the community.

Although The Crossing was able to escape destruction during the Black Summer bushfires, its location means that it remains vulnerable to bushfires.

Part of the funds will go towards positioning The Crossing as a hub for community led recovery and regeneration education in South East NSW. It is located on 19 hectares of native bushland on the edge of Bermagui.

There are four key project areas which make up the total funding grant.

The Crossing project director Dean Turner also said the wider community will additionally benefit from the increase in regional job opportunities and assist in recovery projects through local leadership facilitation skills.

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The adaption works comprise of 46% of the funds which make up the total sum. The project will focus on improved natural disaster resilience for The Crossing.

Some of the works include improved escape routes, dam renovation, installation of a new concrete header tank, a new physical workshop which will also collect water, improved and safer student accommodation facilities.

It will also include a small off-grid smart cabin as a new office for the camp, fire proof bathroom facilities with solar hot water heating system, replacement of leaking solar hot water systems with boiler and hydronic heaters, doubled glazed windows at the community hall, and a wheelchair accessible composting toilet near the children's bunkhouse.

"This funding will improve fire safe education and accommodation facilities for the community at a local not-for-profit organisation.

"Students at the Crossing contribute to Landcare, conservation and sustainable design," said Mr Turner.

An intensive 12-month community leadership program for 40 participants, made up of two to four residents from the most impacted Local Government Areas in South East NSW. This component of the funding will make up 29% of the total funding.

The idea being that these leaders will take the information learnt back to their communities.

The participants would be a mix of individuals from community groups, local businesses, and local government. They will be identified by Community Recovery Officers in each Council area.

The program would include modules on the art of hosting and harvesting conversations, exploring personal leadership, organising and collaboration, working through conflict, exploring Indigenous wisdom on collaboration, and a finishing ceremony to celebrate and get updates on community programs.

The next component of the funding which makes up 18% of the total finds, will go towards their Koala Country Recovery project.

The aim of this aspect of the grant funding is to host a youth Aboriginal team of field workers to survey koala habitat and work on koala country rehabilitation between Gulaga and Mumbulla Mountains and the escarpment.

The team will also assist in fuel assessment, fuel reduction, cool burn preparation, cultural burn conduct and supplementary plantings of preferred koala browse species for habitat rehabilitation.

The crew will consist of three paid young people between 18 and 20 years if age operating three days per week during the cooler periods of the year.

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There will also two community tree planting workshops where knowledge will be shared by Aboriginal people, and biodiversity and koala experts. It will include a demonstration of adaptive management techniques

The final 7% of funding will go towards a Fire Roads and Fire Retardant Landscapes workshop which is a natural extension of the Badja Edge Roads workshop which started in July 2020.

The original project was initiated by The Crossing with the support of Bermagui RFS and SES with workshop funding by COORDINARE South Eastern NSW PHN.

The workshops were gatherings and online groups to discuss fire readiness and building resilience to future disasters and and developing future protection actions and were based around rural roads at the edge of the Badja Fire.

The gatherings also support knowledge sharing between the community and RFS crews on these areas.

The establishment of the Fire Road Groups enlisted a coordinator to be in charge of making sure people on their roads were better prepared for fires.

The BLERF funding will expand the support group and meetings beyond the Murrah, Bermagui, Coolagolite, Wallaga Lake and Akolele fire edge area to include Quaama, Verona, Yowrie, Wandella, Cobargo and Dignams Creek.

They will run various workshops with the intention to better train their Fire Road Groups and trialling the formation of at least one group into a Community Fire Unit.

The funding will also support shelterbelt planting trials, usually linear strips of planted woody vegetation, to achieve more fire retardance and wind speed suppression across the landscape.