“Our work keeping people connected, keeping people in their houses, in their jobs, with their money – having their basic needs met – is resilience. And that’s resilience to anything that comes along, including resilience to disasters”
Strengthening community engagement enhances resilience through multiple pathways. We want to engage with and support our local communities, particularly priority groups, without adding to the workload of smaller community service organisations in our region.
Find out how you can support these ideas and get involved.
How organisations can support community resilience in the face of a changing climate is the central theme in Community-led responses to climate change: discovering conditions for equity and social justice. This work by the Menzies Foundation, Collaboration for Impact and Jesuit Social Services describes actions to promote social justice and equity and identifies enablers and barriers to action.
Developed by community service organisations, communities and Edith Cowan University, the Climate Justice and Resilience Toolkit describes the important role organisations play in supporting their communities. The toolkit includes great resources for organisations wanting to enhance their own resilience and their climate justice work.
The Australian Public Policy Institute’s report Building resilient Australian communities also has actions to strengthen communities. It includes an interesting section “Resilience – a “bit of a dirty word” – about the overuse of the word or its inappropriateness in the context of repeated disasters.
The Hidden Power of Community – unveiling social capitals role in Australia’s disaster resilience reports on work commissioned by Red Cross Australia that provides strong empirical evidence of the relationship between strong communities and disaster resilience.