What is Resiliency About?
Resiliency is about relationships.
Resilient communities view themselves in terms of relationships first and foremost. Resilient communities intentionally seek to connect, challenge, and empower their community members towards wholeness.
Resiliency is about support.
Resilience building communities go beyond focusing primarily on interventions for specific challenges or crises. During crisis recovery or a growth phase, you may incorporate specific programs to help create deeper connections in schools, neighborhoods, or other community settings. Over time, resilient communities go far beyond any specific program to create a sustainable infrastructure that provides ongoing opportunities that support community efforts to increase protective factors and decrease risk factors.
Resiliency is about inclusiveness.
In a resilient community, everyone is a stakeholder. Resilient communities begin with a clear vision of what is possible and take consistent action toward improvement. Resilient communities know that establishing a genuine theme of inclusiveness is the most effective way to help any factions lay aside political and ideological agendas to work together toward the shared goal of growing a resilient community.
Resiliency is about communication.
Resiliency building is a comprehensive effort. Due to ongoing demands, it is easy to get so busy doing the work that you forget or minimize the need to keep others in the loop. To sustain and grow your efforts, you must prioritize communicating with your community. Create a system to repeat these messages over time through various channels. Utilize social media channels, regular local newspaper columns, and email updates. Keep communicating your vision, needs, progress, and successes with your community.
Resiliency is about being stronger together.
A community that becomes educated about the needs of its citizens is more likely to meet those core needs. needs. When community members learn how to play to their strengths and share their unique gifts with each other, magic happens. As we give and seek to strengthen others, we find that we grow and nurture ourselves. The more we learn, the stronger we become.
Resiliency is about the journey, not the finish line.
Resiliency building is a process. It’s an ongoing walk toward a grand vision. Due to the demands, it’s important to prepare for wavering motivation (we include strategies in our free Quick Start Guide). It’s important to embrace the process and celebrate the milestones. When you regularly and intentionally celebrate your successes along the way, you will renew and refuel your energy and your commitment to grow a more resilient community . You are doing work that is impacting the future in ways that you may never fully realize. Find creative ways every day to celebrate this.
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