Building Community Resilience

Sudden shocks, such as storms, floods, or disease outbreaks, are devastating occurrences that get conversations about resilience started. Like illnesses, there are also chronic stresses−high unemployment, poor public health, old or overtaxed infrastructure, water shortages−that weaken communities over time. The impacts from shocks like floods are often compounded by the daily stresses on a community’s social, environmental, and economic systems. In particular, social stresses often coincide with a greater vulnerability to physical shocks: low-income households are more likely to be located in areas at greater risk, and are less likely to be able to recover quickly when a sudden shock occurs. This not only poses additional risks to individuals, it also weakens resilience at the community level.

Building community resilience is about understanding risk−both chronic and acute−and investing in social, economic, and environmental systems that help the community thrive. While there are resilience building frameworks out there, every community is different, so no single approach will work for everyone. However, the foundations for building community resilience are: people, systems thinking, adaptability, transformability, sustainability, and leadership.

community resilience

Community resilience is the capacity of individuals, institutions, businesses & systems to prevent, withstand, recover and maintain their identity no matter what kinds of sudden or chronic stressors they experience.

-Baker United Strategic Recovery Plan, 2018

Community Resiliency Foundational Concepts

PEOPLE

The power to define what a community values and how they envision their future and build resilience resides with community members. This includes actively engaging community stakeholders, including typically underrepresented populations, in the resilience conversation.

SYSTEMS THINKING

The ability to perform problem solving across complex systems, by understanding complex, interrelated risks and what they mean for a similarly complex community.

ADAPTABILITY

A community that can adapt to change is resilient. Because communities and the challenges they face are dynamic, adaptation is an ongoing process rather than an endpoint.

TRANSFORMABILITY

Some challenges are so big that it is not possible to simply adapt; fundamental transformation through rough consensus may be necessary.

SUSTAINABILITY

Community resilience is not sustainable if it only addresses current conditions or generations, without considering future generations and the systems we all depend on.

LEADERSHIP

As individuals and a community, everyone has a hand in confronting challenging issues and taking responsibility for our collective future.