A RESOURCE THAT LINKS RURAL REVITALIZATION TO CED BEST PRACTICE

THE ORIGINS of the Community Resilience Project lie in the dilemmas of residents of British Columbia's small, resource-dependent towns - places that owe their existence to harvesting, extracting, and processing natural resources like trees, fish, minerals, and farmlands. Battered by dramatic changes in markets, technology, environmental law, and the resource base itself, hundreds of these communities have found themselves presented with a stark choice: change or die. Some have died - abandoned by their people, especially the young. Many limp along on a hope and a prayer. A few, however, have bounced back.

Dissecting this diversity of experience in such a way as to help rural communities avoid errors and replicate successes is what the Project is all about. Funded by the Communities Committee of Forest Renewal BC, a provincial crown corporation, a team from the Centre for Community Enterprise set to work in the fall of 1998. Our task has been to develop a conceptual framework and process through which resource-dependent communities can work to strengthen local resilience. After assessing and analyzing their current level of resilience, they cross-reference its weaknesses with proven strategies and instruments of rural revitalization. Communities then use this information to achieve more durable and cost-effective results from the time, talent, and resources they invest in local planning and development. As a result of greater resilience, they are better able to control their future in the face of change.

The task has taken us far and wide in the past two years. The existing literature concerning definitions and indicators of community health, quality of life, and resilience is immense, not to mention that describing practical strategies for rural recovery. Still more daunting has been our desire to interpret, clarify, and organize that information so as to create something practicable for small, often isolated communities.

The results of our labours are compiled in the Community Resilience Manual: A Resource for Rural Recovery & Renewal and in Tools & Techniques for Community Recovery & Renewal, both available from this website. The Manual is divided into two sections:

A guide to a 4-step approach for strengthening community resilience. A series of data collection tools and formats that residents can use to develop a Portrait of Community Resilience and set priorities for local action.

Tools & Techniques is the beginning of what will, over the years, grow into an encyclopaedia of best practices from the fields of community-based development and economic development. Currently, the entries explain over 60 specific methods that communities have used to enhance their economic and social well-being, as well as people and publications to tap for further guidance.

We have more to learn in order to ensure these resources are as flexible, straightforward, cost-effective and meaningful as possible in a variety of rural communities. The following article summarizes its conceptual framework and process as an invitation to you to collaborate in the evolution of the Project, and its improvement and extension to other communities.

A resilient community is one that takes intentional action to enhance the personal and collective capacity of its citizens and institutions to respond to and influence the course of social and economic change.

As communities face increasing levels of social and economic volatility, they are having to adapt. The ability to assess and specify their level of resilience allows communities to identify areas of weakness, and select and implement strategies that have been proven to target those difficulties.

In order to assist communities in strengthening the level of their resilience, we have developed a new conceptual model. It starts with four dimensions:

 

People: Residents' beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour in matters of leadership, initiative, education, pride, co-operation, self-reliance, and participation. Organizations: The scope, nature, and level of collaboration within local organizations, institutions, and groups. Resources: The extent to which the community builds on local resources to achieve its goals, while drawing on external resources strategically. Community Process: The nature and extent of community economic development planning, participation, and action.

The dimensions are the main themes or core components of a community's social and economic structure. They form a foundation for a detailed analysis of community functions and for the creation of a "portrait" of community resilience.

ADDING DETAIL TO THE MODEL - 23 CHARACTERISTICS OF RESILIENT COMMUNITIES

Each of the four dimensions is described in more detail by a series of characteristics of resilience. These characteristics are more specific than the dimensions. They are the factors that we can examine in a community to assess the level of resilience present. We can research and analyze them.

The characteristics in the model of resilience are not exhaustive. However, they have been chosen because they have proven to be strongly predictive in assessing resilience.

People

• Leadership is representative of the community.
  
• Elected community leadership is visionary, shares power, and builds consensus.
  
• Community members are involved in significant community decisions.
  
• The community feels a sense of pride.
  
• People feel optimistic about the future of the community.
  
• There is a spirit of mutual assistance and co-operation in the community.
  
• People feel a sense of attachment to their community.
  
• The community is self-reliant and looks to itself and its own resources to address major issues.
  
• There is a strong belief in and support for education at all levels.

  Organizations

• There are a variety of community economic development (CED) organizations in the community such that the key CED functions are well-served.
  
• Organizations in the community have developed partnerships and collaborative working relationships.

  Resources

• Employment in the community is diversified beyond a single large employer.
  
• Major employers in the community are locally owned.
  
• The community has a strategy for increasing independent local ownership.
  
• There is openness to alternative ways of earning a living and economic activity.
  
• The community looks outside itself to seek and secure resources (skills, expertise and finance) that will address identified areas of weakness.
  
• The community is aware of its competitive position in the broader economy.

  Community Process

• The community has a community economic development plan that guides its development.
  
• Citizens are involved in the creation and implementation of the community vision and goals.
  
• There is on-going action towards achieving the goals in the CED Plan.
  
• There is regular evaluation of progress towards the community's strategic goals.
  
• Organizations use the CED plan to guide their actions.
  
• The community adopts a development approach that encompasses all segments of the population.

USING THE MODEL OF RESILIENCE

The Community Resilience Manual uses the concept and model of resilience to help communities through a structured and focussed process of prioritizing and planning. This is a 4-step process.

STEP 1: GETTING READY TO USE THE RESILIENCE PROCESS

The first step is to present the resilience process to community groups and funders and organize a local steering committee. Local people have an important role to play in determining which methods are used and how the resilience process will integrate with other local activities. Residents must also define what they hope to be able to accomplish as a result of the process. Another essential aspect of this step is to create a common understanding about what resilience is and why it is important.

STEP 2: ASSESSING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE

Data collected for each of the 23 characteristics is documented and analyzed in a portrait of community resilience. Resilience is not static. It changes in relation to internal and external stresses. So the portrait is important as a way to identify current resilience strengths and weaknesses, and then to track change over time.

Collection of data is streamlined by using indicators that specify exactly what information is needed. Indicators associated with each of the characteristics are included in the Manual. They have been selected because they have proven highly predictive of the characteristics and because they represent information that is relatively easy to access.

The model uses both quantitative indicators (such as population data from a recent census) and qualitative indicators (such as surveying people's perceptions ) to identify the extent to which each characteristic is present in a given community. Section Two in the Manual presents a variety of tools and options for collecting this data.

STEP 3: DECISION-MAKING - SETTING COMMUNITY PRIORITIES

The portrait provides a new perspective on the social and economic structure of a community. Analyzing it can help communities to gain new insights into factors that can increase their capacity to adapt and influence the course of change.

The Manual describes a decision-making process which helps communities to further analyze the significance of the portrait to their community resilience. The decision-making process suggests ways of involving community members, applying their insights and knowledge and prioritizing resilience weaknesses. The result in all test communities has been one priority that, once addressed, will significantly increase the community's ability to take intentional action to strengthen its resilience.

STEP 4: PLANNING

The final step in the resilience process, involves the development of a plan to strengthen the priority selected in the decision-making workshop. Step 4 is potentially the most complicated in the resilience process and will look very different in each community. We have used a community planning workshop as the foundation for bringing people together to think through the implementation options.

Fundamental to the success of this step is an awareness on the part of the community, and particularly the steering committee, that there is a wealth of experience they may draw upon when considering alternatives for action. Even if a goal has yet to be clarified, Step 3 will have identified a priority issue that is linked to specific resilience characteristics and to other local issues. Armed with this information, the steering committee can begin exploring how other communities have addressed this issue, and what has worked (or not worked) for them. This record of effective action is what we call best practice. Introducing people in a systematic fashion to these best practices is the purpose of Tools & Techniques.

A CONTEXT OF BEST PRACTICE

Tools & Techniques is a compendium of the actions which communities have taken to address issues of community resilience. Over 60 entries are organized into four categories:

Doing the Planning, Research, & Advocacy

Building Human Resources

Retaining & Creating Jobs (though Business Development)

Addressing the Financial Gaps

"Addressing the Financial Gaps," for instance, includes explanations and examples bearing on access to equity and/or credit:

community development loan funds

community equity investment funds

community foundations

community revolving loan funds

comprehensive development finance institutions

equity match-making

individual development accounts

loan guarantee programs

The section "Creating Jobs" features strategies which undertake a number of critical functions by means of entrepreneur support services, self-employment strategies, and venture formation, including:

business incubators

entrepreneur network facilitation

feasibility studies support

community-owned venture development

co-operative employment partnership

joint ventures

nonprofit enterprise development

outside entrepreneurial recruitment

worker-ownership

business visitation/mentoring

early warning systems

succession planning and worker buy-out

To the maximum extent possible, the examples are taken from Canadian small town experience.

A WORK IN PROGRESS

In November 1999, CCE released for discussion the first draft of The Community Resilience Manual in portable document format. Over 500 communities, government agencies, researchers, and CED practitioners downloaded the draft in the subsequent 12 months.

Their responses indicated that our efforts were not misplaced. Communities involved in the field tests reported gathering new information about local attitudes and organizations, and improvements to local decision-making and priority-setting. They were also impressed with how the process engaged a broad cross-section of the community in thinking about resilience and its economic impact, in mobilizing them, and in creating new energy for local initiatives. The resilience process is not a mere research methodology, nor does it purport to replace a small town's current planning process. Instead, it opens up a way of thinking and helps focus community dialogue on key aspects of healthy community functioning that seldom find their way into a community strategic plan.

Subjecting the draft document to an additional year of scrutiny and field-testing enabled us to refine it significantly. But "are we there yet?" By no means. We now look forward to responses, suggestions, and news from the people who use The Community Resilience Manual and Tools & Techniques.

In 2001 and 2002 several specific research and development projects will enable us to refine the community resilience model, principally in terms of the integration of ecological characteristics and indicators. Likewise, we are exploring its application on a regional basis. In many rural areas, decision-making and strategy formulation could benefit from participation of several small communities and the examination of regional characteristics and indicators. People have also expressed interest in linking community health indicators to the process and in adapting it to First Nations communities. We will also revise, expand, and update Tools & Techniques in the years to come so that it keeps pace with the highly innovative field of community economic development.

Please keep us apprised of your experiences and insights with respect to the Manual. We invite you to consider this a collective resource that we all keep building, and from which we all keep learning.

Click here to obtain a copy of the Community Resilience Manual in portable document format (PDF). You will require Adobe® Acrobat® Reader®, software, available free from Adobe, to view and print the documents. There is no charge for downloading or using this publication, but we do require that you supply some basic information so that we may track the site's effectiveness.

If your community is interested in exploring options for assessing local resilience, contact the Community Resilience Project by e-mail, or mail to

Centre for Community Enterprise
ATTN: Community Resilience Project
PO Box 1161
Port Alberni, B.C. V9Y 7M1

The COMMUNITY RESILIENCE PROJECT TEAM comprises six Centre for Community Enterprise staff, associates, and affiliates: Michelle Colussi, Mike Lewis, Sandy Lockhart, Stewart Perry, Pippa Rowcliffe, and Don McNair.

Copyright © Centre for Community Enterprise
2001-2003 All Rights Reserved