Building community resilience is one of the major challenges for the government, NGOs and social service organisations in the world. Resilience is the capacity of a community to survive, adapt and bounce back from a crisis or disaster. Resilience can be conceptualized along three dimensions physical, emotional and cultural. Physical resilience refers to the ability of a city or community to rebuild its physical structure. Emotional resilience refers to the ability of individuals, families and communities to cope and heal from trauma. Cultural resilience refers to the ability of customs, traditions, languages or religions to survive and evolve. Four properties of resilience are robustness (strength to withstand certain level of stress), rapidity (responding in a timely manner to contain loss and avoid disruption), redundancy (the extent to which elements, systems etc are substitutable), and resourcefulness (the capacity to identify problems, establish priorities and mobilize resources). To build community resilience, we should reduce the risk to individuals & communities; have in place social networks, leadership & accountability, cooperation & coordination, clearly defined mandates, communication & transparency, fairness, continuous learning, belief systems, conducive environment & lifestyle, infrastructure & support services, positive outlook, sense of purpose and diverse & innovative economy.
Recorded: July 2010 Brisbane, Australia
Coping Resilience & Hope Building, Asia Pacific Regional Conference
Organiser: The Brisbane Institute of Strengths Based Practice
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