Around 35 students from Great Lakes College; Wingham, Taree and Chatham high schools; and Coolongolook, Tinonee and Krambach public schools attended a think tank day at Club Taree to talk about how the disasters felt for them, and potential actions to help in case of possible future disasters.

Along with the students and their accompanying teachers, around 15 emergency service personnel representing Fire and Rescue, the RFS, SES, Australian Red Cross, Save the Children, and mental health representatives from Hunter New England Health District attended.

"We have a lot of community engagement around adults, but the children aren't asked, quite often we don't hear their voices dealing with these disasters," Val Schaefer, community development project officer at Mission Australia said.

Related: MidCoast Council given more than $1 million for disaster preparedness

During the event children drew pictures and wrote to convey their thoughts, and workshopped ideas in groups on butcher's paper.

"They talked about the threat and how it felt at the time of the immediate threat and how it impacted their families and their lives," Val said.

"We asked them about what ideas could make them feel safer in the future ... how could we make it different next time so it's not quite as frightening, or we can support you and your family better. And there were so many great ideas.

"For instance, one idea was having a pet evacuation center just for the pets. There was a brilliantly worked up idea about a drone delivering food and medical supplies to those families and people that are cut off. And then there was another idea about education from the emergency services in the schools - the emergency services to go right into the schools and talk about fire preparedness and talk about flood preparedness.

"it was just wonderful. The energy and the vibe was just fantastic and we had so many positive comments from the emergency services, saying how insightful and wonderful it was to hear it from the voices of children."

Jake Davey was engaged to produce a video of the event. Children and teachers were interviewed straight to camera, and footage was captured of all of the activities being held.

When production of the video is complete, copies will be given to the first responders and emergency services, support organisations and MidCoast Council, who granted Mission Australia and Mid Coast 4 Kids the funds to undertake this project, titled Hearing the voices of children and young people in disaster response and recovery.

"We are hoping that (the video) will feed into a broader recovery plan for the council. I understand that they're going to work on and fine tune recovery plans for the whole of the Mid Coast," Val said.

All schools and organisations were given a thank you gift at the end of the day, of a native plant provided from MidCoast Council's nursery.

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