ISET, in collaboration with the American Red Cross, has produced a handbook that is designed for individuals and groups looking to host community resilience-building events. It is easy to read and has plentiful visuals to help organizers communicate resilience-building concepts to the general public. Our goal was to create a handbook that could be used by people hoping to help their communities become more resilient, even if they don’t have a theoretical background in community resilience-building or a lot of money to fund such efforts. This toolkit was piloted in Vanuatu and Indonesia, within urban communities vulnerable to climate change.
Through our collaboration with the American Red Cross, an organization that works with hundreds of communities all over the world, we hope that this instruction handbook will help many different communities increase their resilience and become more prepared to face disasters.
You can view the handbook here:
Why community-level resilience?
Community level intervention allows for NGOs to meet directly with the most vulnerable communities. Because disasters are devastating for impoverished communities (1), NGOs and programs working to reduce vulnerability and increase resilience should consider intervening directly at the community level. Community-level intervention offers more flexibility than state or national level interventions, which can often be too formal and ridged in their approach.
Scaling Up Successful Community Projects to State, Regional, and National Levels
Once successful strategies of intervention are achieved at the community-level, then efforts can be expanded to the state and national levels. This is where coalition building can be very useful: local organizations are great for working at the community level but when scaling up it is beneficial for them to forge partnerships with organizations that work at the city, state, national, and global level.