Endowment Report on Community Resilience and Wealth Released

November 19, 2009 – Greenville, SC – Resilience Report Highlights Challenges and Opportunities for Rural Communities

The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (the Endowment) today announced the release of Community Resilience and Wealth: The challenges and opportunities for rural communities in a rapidly changing world, a report developed by Shanna Ratner and Dr. Susanne Moser.

The Endowment-sponsored report is intended to better define resiliency in the community context and to aid understanding of how resiliency applies to communities. In addition to an extensive literature review, the report is the result of a series of interviews with a broad spectrum of community practitioners.

“This work sets the stage for thinking about resilience across an entire system from ecology to community and highlights important factors of resilience in communities that local leaders can put to use,” said Diane Snyder, the Endowment’s Vice-President Community Development. The report also includes an assessment of tools and practices currently being used to assess resiliency.

Resilience is seen as “the ability of communities to spring back, to reinvent themselves, and to survive in the face of adversity.” Resiliency demonstrated at the community level is important because it helps mitigate the impact of stress from economic upheaval, demographic shifts, socio-cultural and political transformation, short-term disasters and long-term changes.

A resilient community has the ability to protect, reestablish, and grow community wealth in response to disturbances. The presence of community wealth, “the sum total of the intellectual, individual, social, built, natural, and financial assets of a community,” is the basis from which communities build resiliency, however it does not assure resilient responses to stressors. Other factors which contribute to more robust resiliency include the presence of local institutions, community focused policies, community leaders with open attitudes, and active networks for the exchange of information.

The report identifies four recommended tools to assist communities in developing better resiliency. These include: assessment tools, tools for (re)imagining the future, tools for enhancing dialogue and learning, and technical assistance resources. These tools are intended to be used as proactive steps to build skills and community capacity; however times of crisis present “teachable moments” for implementing the tools to build community resilience.

For more information contact

Diane Snyder, (541) 426-3069

diane@runslikeclock.work

About the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (Endowment)

The Endowment is a not-for-profit public charity working collaboratively with partners in the public and private sectors to advance systemic, transformative and sustainable change for the health and vitality of the nation’s working forests and forest-reliant communities. www.usendowment.org

About the Authors

Shanna Ratner, Principal of Yellow Wood Associates, has been active in the field of rural community economic development for over 24 years. Her membership in the Aspen Institute’s Learning Cluster on Rural Community Capacity Building in the 1990s enhanced her knowledge of capacity building, a key ingredient to community resilience. She is currently working with the Ford Foundation on articulating a wealth-based theory and practice of rural development designed to reorient the field toward triple bottom line strategies that restore, create, and maintain wealth in low-wealth rural areas.

Susanne Moser, Ph.D., is Director and Principal Researcher of Susanne Moser Research & Consulting, in Santa Cruz, CA. Her current research focuses on adaptation to climate change in California’s coastal sector, the development of effective decision support systems, communication for social change, and on resilience in the face of rapid environmental and social change. She is deeply steeped in the social- scientific hazards and climate change research traditions interested in better understanding community and regional resilience.