Fostering responsive, agile and adaptable communities

Develop multiple plans for the future, including emergency response plans.

While it is impossible to predict and prepare for every potential threat, the exercise of creating response plans develops resilience by raising awareness that rapid, momentous changes can occur at any time.

In developing and/or being made aware of emergency plans and plans for the future, community members will become more flexible and adaptable to potential change.

Communities should have a vision for the future to demonstrate to their constituent parts that they will continue to meet their needs. Communities need resources to achieve this.

A community will fall apart from the inside out if its members feel their needs are no longer being met. And, as one participant noted, “If there is no community, there is no resilience”. As such, plans for the future that illustrate how a community intends to serve each constituent part, and connect communities both internally and externally can be invaluable for enhancing community resilience.

In order to achieve this, communities must have access to resources. Without the ability to meet its basic needs, a community will cease to exist. Accordingly, it is prerequisite for resilience that communities have adequate physical resources, such as food, water, housing, heating, and other infrastructure. Non-physical resources, including education, female empowerment, and anti-corruption training, strategies, and enforcement, also foster resilience.

Ensure community voices are heard

which indicators or metrics ought to be included enable better policy recommendations in the future by enabling us to assess whether certain unproven policies in fact enhance resilience, and if so, to what degree and in what time frame.

Practitioners, policy makers and academics must allow for locals to speak for themselves to decolonise resilience work, and generate ideas for improving resilience from communities themselves.

Communities could also be taught about the policy making process and empower them to influence decision makers.