Resilience For Dummies

Chapter 14

Building a Resilient Community

IN THIS CHAPTER

Knowing who the people are that make up your community

Learning how to evaluate how resilient your community is

Taking steps to build up your community

Individual resilience is influenced by the circles of support that you’re connected to. These networks of support — which can consist of your family, neighbors, friends, colleagues, or spiritual community — are instrumental in providing you with emotional, practical, and material support, especially when you’re faced with challenges. The more resilient the community that supports you, the more you benefit. The resilience of this community is dependent on the strength and cohesiveness of the social bonds between members and on the levels of cooperation, collaboration, mutual respect, trust, and effective communication. (For more details on what makes a resilient community, see Chapter 8.)

This chapter focuses on helping you examine your social support networks and guides you to evaluate and build a community that is also resilient.

Determining Who Your People Are

A community consists of a group of people who share values, goals, obligations, duties, responsibilities, and interests, ...