In a recent webinar, experts explained more about the need, methods, and benefits of organizing Transformational Resilience Coordinating Networks (TRCNs) worldwide.
Part 2 of the TRCN Community of Practice (CoP) explained how and why TRCNs are multi-sectoral community-led networks that use a public health approach to prevent and heal the distresses and traumas generated by the climate-ecosystem-biodiversity (C-E-B) crisis, as residents do their part to reduce the crisis to manageable levels and greatly enhance local conditions.
RESOURCES:
Session 1 (October 2024)
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome, everybody, to the second session of the community of practice. We're going to get going in about a minute, so just hang in there, uh, if you would, and we'll get going soon. Thanks.
Well, welcome, everyone, to the second session of the community of practice on our Race to Resilience initiative to organize transformational resilience coordinating networks throughout North America and worldwide, and I welcome you no matter what. Time zone you're in and what country you're living in. I hope it's uh, you're you're doing well I'm, bob
doppelt.
I coordinate the international transformational resilience coalition And this initiative is an itrc Initiative with our partners and cosponsors, the climate, the campaign for trauma informed policy and practice and Jesse Kohler's who's handling the technical aspects here and trauma informed Oregon, uh, who are also with us today, uh, Christian and Christy, uh, who are handling chat and other things.
And I also want to say thank you to all of our cosponsors, uh, from many countries around the world that you can see. In the logos. Um, I just want to start by reiterating the key message of this community practice and of our entire initiative. And that is that community is medicine throughout human history.
Our ability to band together and cooperate has always been key to providing the mutual aid and emotional support needed to help people survive and remain healthy and resilient during crisis and solve complex problems. And by organizing transformation resilience coordinating networks in neighborhoods and communities now everywhere, we can do this again for the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis, the goals of this short two part community practice.
are simple. We can't cover everything we've, for the last four years, we've run 10 week, eight and 10 week community practices to go into much more depth on this. This two part, uh, uh, COP is just trying to provide you with enough information to help you decide if you can form a Transformation Resilience Courting Network in your neighborhood and community.
And if so, we want to then engage you formally in our Race to Resilience program. A quick summary of last week's community practice. We described how the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis is rapidly accelerating event that in different times, ways, and magnitude is going to severely stress or traumatize emotionally and psychologically traumatize everyone.
This means we now have two urgent tasks in front of us. Build a horizontal social infrastructure in communities that is connections. Between organizations, groups and individuals throughout the community that engages residents in providing the mutual aid and emotional support needed to help people survive and remain healthy and resilient during the decades long climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis, and use those experiences to develop new meaning, purpose, courage and hope in life and thrive.
While at the same time motivating residents to do their part to reduce the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis to manageable levels. and greatly enhance local social economic and ecological conditions. And our perspective is and our experience is that transformation resilience coordinating networks are the most effective way to build and sustain that social infrastructure that's needed and to implement the strategies needed to accomplish those two tasks.
Today we're going to focus on how, last week we focused on how to organize Transformation Resilience Coordinated Network. Today, we're going to focus on how to use a public health approach to develop strategies that strengthen the five foundational protective factors we found in our research that are going to be needed to build and sustain population level mental wellness transformation resilience and joining us Uh is going to be Howard Lawrence who's the coordinator of neighborhood services in Edmonton, Canada To discuss how they're addressing one of those really fundamental Transformation Foundational protective factors.
He runs their neighborhood for climate program. It's really about building social connections I want to mention that we're going to hold one additional community practice session This is going to be an hour long session that you might want to intend on Wednesday, November 13th Starting at the same time as the previous two there is no agenda And we'll be no material presented at this session.
Instead, it's going to be an opportunity for you to meet each other, discuss questions, ask, problem solve, uh, and in other ways, just get, uh, address issues that are on your mind. Um, so please save the date and the time if you're interested, and we'll also send an invitation and a reminder before that. And one other thing.
Excuse me, Christian's going to put this in the chat afterwards, but we, um, uh, if, we would like to know if you're willing to have your name and email shared with everybody else who's on the community of practice, because some people have asked for that to be able to communicate with you. So, uh, you can put that in chat or send us an email afterward.
We'll follow up with an email. Let's start with a very brief resilience pause. We did this last week, uh, also, uh, just to show you what kind of resilience skills you can learn yourself and you can share with others in your community through the community, the Transformation Resilience Coordinating Network.
And we're going to practice a skill called grounding that was developed by the Trauma mindfulness, uh, practice. And it's a simple presencing skill to calm your mind, body, and emotions when you're distressed. We're going to go through this quickly. I'd encourage you to do it later and take more time, but just find a comfortable position, either sitting, standing against the wall, laying down, whatever position you might be in, and then bring attention to the places in your body that are supported by something solid.
So, if you're sitting in a chair, is it your buttocks and your back and maybe your feet on the floor? If you're standing against a wall, is it your back that's supported by something solid and maybe your feet? Or maybe it's your entire body if you're laying on the floor. Just find places that are, uh, supported by something solid.
And then when you do that, bring attention to all the places in your body that feel pleasant or neutral. Or simply places that feel good. So just sort of find places that might be tingling nicely, might have some pleasant warmth to it, uh, and just sort of notice that, or that are neutral, they don't feel anything.
And just try to focus on that for just a, a second.
And your attention's likely to shift, To unpleasant sensations in your body, heat, pain, et cetera. When that happens, just bring your attention back to the area of your body that feels pleasant or neutral. So notice it and then say, okay, what feels pleasant? What feels neutral in my body and just shift your attention in that way.
And as you do that without any judgment Just notice what you experience in your body in your minds and emotions when you're focusing on pleasant mood Or neutral sensations rather than unpleasant sensations when you deliberately focus your attention on pleasant or neutral sensations.
Again, I ran through this very quickly. I would encourage you to do this at more length, uh, afterwards, but you can practice grounding at any time, anywhere. And Transformation Resilience Coordinating Networks can help residents learn this and many other skills as well, uh, to calm their body, mind, and emotions when they're distressed.
Transcribed With that said, let's do a 10 minute breakout room, uh, just, uh, to, uh, get a chance to just meet other people. So just briefly introduce yourself, where you live, and the type of work you do. Briefly share one thing that makes you laugh. And then as a group, discuss what you all gained from last week's community practice.
And as part of this, if you developed a mission and vision of success for a local Transformation Resilience Coordinating Network, and you shared it with others to see if they would engage in this, what happened? What resulted? Uh, and at the end of the community practice, try to, uh, uh, of the breakout room, just try to designate someone to post anything in chat, a couple of comments that were key takeaways or questions.
So Jesse is going to divide you into groups of, uh, 3 to 5 people now. We'll see you back in 10 minutes. And Christian's going to post these. Points the questions to put to address in chat for you. So, Jesse, I appreciate that I'm going to go ahead and open up the rooms. Now, you should be put right into them.
If you have any problems, don't hesitate to come back out to the main room. We'll be here to help out. See you all in about 10 minutes.
Welcome back, everyone. I hope you had a good few minutes to chat a little bit. We know it's not a lot of time, but if you have anything that stands out, anything you want to share, any particular questions, post that in chat. We won't have time to address it right now, but we will have another breakout room and in a longer question and answer period, uh, towards the end of the community practice.
So I just want to now sort of share what we, what the process we're going through. Last week, we talked about step one in the organizing and, and, uh, operating a transformational resilience courting network. That is to get organized by forming a steering committee. Uh, today we're going to cover a whole lot more, uh, uh, issues and content, but we can't obviously do it all.
So we're really just going to talk about. How you can get going in your community to help build mental wellness and resilience and talk about the five foundational protective factors that we mentioned. Um, and I want to start though by talking about the fact that the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis requires us to redefine what mental health and psychosocial problems mean, how they exist.
Um, what appears as mental health and psychosocial problems are usually coping mechanisms. Self survive, uh, protective survival mechanisms that have gone wrong. Um, we try to do certain things to protect ourselves from threats we experienced, uh, and they ended up harming ourselves or harming others. Uh, and when acute traumas or toxic stresses are continuous or overwhelming, the mind often cannot distinguish between real and false threats.
They're so overwhelming. We can't tell the difference. And so we remain in a state of hyper inflated fear. And this can cause people to fail to consider healthy options, the behaviors and reactions, and adopt coping mechanisms that end up harming themselves, other people, or the natural environment. We'll talk about that later.
And the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis is the perfect storm for these kinds of reactions. When cascading breakdowns that assistance people rely on for basic needs are mixed with more frequent and extremely prolonged disasters, the stresses and traumas can activate maladaptive coping mechanisms that harm individuals, their families, organizations, and entire communities and societies.
And many of you work in communities now that are very stressed or traumatized. So one way, after you get a steering committee organized, one way that committee can begin to engage the community and start building population mental wellness and resilience is by helping them begin to heal their traumas.
This is even before you develop your long term strategies. You can help your community begin to heal. Um, and in severely traumatized communities, this can be done by engaging group and community minded, uh, residents in community, group and community minded healing gatherings. These are healing circles and other forms of engagement.
Uh, and these go on in many parts all over the world, in the U. S. and other places, in groups of five to a hundred people. People share what they're experiencing, the distresses, etc. Hear what others are experiencing, and find out, oh, I'm not alone, this is not, nothing wrong with me, this is pretty normal. And it's done in a safe, non judgmental, and non clinical setting.
And then you teach people or people learn age and culturally accounted resilient skills like that grounding skill we just practiced and others and begin to heal the trauma by releasing the trauma in their nervous system, while also establishing social connections. And building social supports. Here's some examples of organizations doing this kind of work.
The Trauma Resource Institute, which is a core partner of ours on this whole initiative. They have the community resilience model. They go all over the world and traumatize communities and help run these kind of events. The Center for Mind Body Medicine does something very, very similar to this. Um, The Integrative Community Therapy runs, uh, is run by, uh, came out of Brazil, uh, and is, uh, to help folks in impoverished areas of Brazil.
And now it's being used in many other nations around the world. And they are group and community minded healing opportunities. Still another powerful way Transformation Resilience Coordinating Networks can begin their work is by, uh, actively engaging residents and identifying protective factors or assets.
Uh, so after residents begin to heal, if they're in these healing gatherings or, uh, in distressed but still functioning communities, engage resident, your residents in mapping local protective factors or assets. Protective factors are social connections, skills people have, assets local organizations provide, and other resources and services that residents believe help them prevent mental health and psychosocial struggles, heal them when they occur, and support mental wellness and resilience.
Asset mapping actively engage residents in a strength based and wellness and resilience lens. Thank you Not a risk based lens, and it's usually done before a resilience network finalizes its goals, objectives, and strategies, because the information you get by developing these asset maps, if you will, provides important information on what those strategies should be.
So here's a sample community asset map. You see how they're up at the up left hand quarter, the institutions that might exist that can help individuals with gifts and skills, et cetera, moving to the right, physical spaces, gardens, parks, local economic opportunities, like moving down skills and strength and stories that exist in the communities.
Uh, stories of how the community overcame trauma in the past, et cetera. Uh, or adversities and over to the right different or associations that might be helpful. So you just help the ask residents to identify all these, you facilitate the process and you can even go so far as to then map them specifically on a map over here is this organization over here is this organization, et cetera, on after social connections, strength, local strengths, resources and other protective factors are identified and then described on a map residents have more easily able to envision How they can be used and how they can form additional ones.
Oh, all of these assets are over in this neighborhood. How do we get those over in our neighborhood, you know, etc. And it helps them then figure out how they can address immediate leads. survive crisis, support wellness and resilience, address the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis, and enhance local conditions.
And the point to remember here is identifying and building on assets has generally far greater impact than the all too common approach of trying to assess what the risks are, what the deficits are, and trying to fix them, and try to treating individuals with symptoms of pathology. And then once you have done that kind of work, and it can take a month or two, getting your, uh, your community involved, it can take longer, you can start this in a small group and then do it again at a larger group, sort of expand the, the, uh, asset mapping process, you can develop a community resilience portrait as a, as a result of that.
And this is, uh, uh, a comprehensive written document, it can be, that describes the existing protective factors and identifies potential additional ones, et cetera, et cetera. A written document is not essential. What's more important through these processes, as we've seen, is to build social connections. By having these discussions with others and helping people meet others to engage in these discussions.
This is really what's critical for the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis. If you do develop a written document, that's great. Pass it around the community, find a good place where people can go and find it all the time. Uh, that's very helpful also, and there's no one size fits all approach to this.
Each community should use a method that fits their local demographics, culture, and resources. And Transformation Resilience Coordinating Networks can then use this information to craft their public health strategies to build population level mental wellness and transformation resilience. We've talked about this a little bit in the past, but let me just go through it again.
What is a public health approach to mental wellness and resilience? It is a population level strategy. That focuses on improving the health and well being of a community through large scale prevention and healing programs. It uses both multidisciplinary and multisystemic approaches, meaning, uh, many different people.
It's not just mental health providers. It's all sorts of different. People with different disciplines, uh, and training and backgrounds in the community, multidisciplinary, uh, that are also trying to address all those different, uh, uh, factors that create mental health and psychosocial problems.
Multi-systemic. So you have to involve grassroots and neighborhood leaders, faith leaders,
youth leaders, uh, health education, and many others in the process. And a public health approach has four primary components. First, you identify the issues you want to address, mental health and psychosocial well being.
You identify the protective factors and sometimes risk factors, but be, be very careful about doing that. You develop strategies and interventions and then you implement and continue to evaluate that those interventions while you're, after they're being implemented and continue to improve in strategies.
And a public health approach differs from mental health and human services because they focus on treating individuals after they experience problems. This is proactive and it's prevention. Here's a good analogy of a public health approach to mental wellness and transformational resilience. In the 19th century, strategies to prevent disease by cleaning up sewers and water supplies were found to be far more effective than all the doctors and medical treatments in the world were in addressing the diseases that those sewer systems and polluted water generated.
And so, We now need to address all the aspect of the sewer system, so to speak, use the analogy, causing those social, psychological, emotional, behavioral problems and clean them up. Um, so let me just say now, because we're going to dive into some of these protective factors. That humans, all of us have a basic need for meaning and purpose in our lives.
This is a really basic human need. And there's really five, uh, ways that humans find meaning and purpose in life. There's probably more, but these are some that are where we'll research. Let's think about this yourself as you do it. The first is by developing and fostering positive social relationships with others.
Another is through engagement in concrete tasks that provide tangible ways to To engage in something larger than yourself and feel a sense of accomplishment. A third is by regulating it, uh, and monitoring and regulating your mood. Another is by focusing on what is within your control while keeping the big picture in mind, having a strong vision of success, and keeping your energy focused.
And just as importantly is the ability to use tragedy as lessons to grow and find more honest and constructive ways to perceive and engage in the world. I'm going to talk about five, the five foundational protective factors our research found are really going to be vital for the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis, and each of these protective factors addresses one or more of these really important sources of meaning and purpose.
So here's the five foundational protective factors we found through our research. I'm just going to go through them very quickly. The first is to build social connections across boundaries in the community. We're going to talk about that in a second. The second, and these are all interrelated, is to ensure a just transition by creating supportive, just, physical, built, economic, and ecological conditions, housing, transportation, parks, that's physical build, economics, or jobs.
Uh, and, uh, businesses and ecological conditions or local forests, waterways, uh, pollution, uh, et cetera, air quality. Um, the third is develop universal mental wellness and resilience. The fourth is foster engagement in specific practices that promote mental wellness and resilience. And the last, again, I'm saying it last, it actually, as we just discussed, it might be the first one you start with in your community, is to establish ongoing opportunities to heal suffering and trauma.
We're going to come back and talk about the other four in a minute, but I want to now focus on just one of those core protective factors. So take a moment to think about when you feel happiest, most fulfilled, and find meaning in your life. When do you feel happiest, most fulfilled, and find meaning in your life?
And if you have something that pops to mind, you might want to share that in chat. When do you feel happiest, most fulfilled, most fulfilled? And you really find meaning in your life.
And as you do that, think about how much of your happiness, your fulfillment and meanings depends on your connections with other people or helping other people. And put that comment in chat too, is your happiness, fulfillment and meaning often depend on some kind of connection with others, friends, families, love, uh, loved ones, or helping others in some way.
What is really true is that loneliness and social isolation are profound drivers of mental health and psychosocial problems today. Research shows that more and more people have no one to confide in, and no one to get help from, for mental health, or drug use, or family abuse, economic, or other types of struggles.
Social, and this is true in many, many countries, social isolation and loneliness can produce anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress disorder, increased suicidality, and much more. And lack of social connections and loneliness can lead to loss of self worth, loss of meaning and purpose in life, both of which are essential, are an essential human need.
Loneliness also inhibits the immune system, promotes inflammation, and aggravates the stress response, making it twice as harmful to both mental and physical health issues like obesity, and it also greatly increases premature mortality. People who are lonely, uh, and isolated generally don't live as long as others.
Conversely, social connections prevents mental health. problems, strengthens physical health, and increases the longevity, chances of longevity by about 50%. People who feel connected to others have lower rates of anxiety and depression. They have higher self esteem and more empathy for others. And they tend to be more trusting and cooperative, which makes others more open to trusting and cooperating them.
In other words, good social connections generates positive feedback that enhances social, psychological, and emotional wellness, as well as physical wellness. And social connections are vital. During disasters and extreme stresses, especially the first two to five days and often far longer. We're finding that in northern Western North Carolina.
Now, where it just got hit by Hurricane Helene. But all of you have experienced this or seen this around the world. Survival mostly in the first days of a disaster depends on friends and neighbors and family, not emergency responders. And in many countries and in many communities, there simply aren't, uh, for emergency responders, there are not many.
And social connections are key to providing the mutual aid that helps people move to safe places and obtain food, water, shelter, power, health care, and other basic needs. And they are key to providing a sense of safety and emotional support during and long after a disaster hits or you experience extreme stresses.
And as we said, throughout history, it is relationships with others that have been most critical for survival during crisis, uh, because they set the foundation for neighboring mutual aid and emotional support. And further, as we just said, when people rise above their own self interest and provide mutual aid and emotional support to others, they often find much needed meaning and purpose in their lives.
And this is why enhancing social connections is by far, The most important protective factors, transformation, resilience, coordinating networks could should focus on for the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis. There are 3 interconnected types of social connections. Resilience network should focus on this is 1 way to think about it.
There's other ways to think about it, but 1 is called bonding social support networks. These are strong ties between friends and family that you share personal issues with. It's very. intimate, more intimate, but those can, connecting bonding networks together, bridging them, is also very important. So your, your close network is to connect to.
In other words, that's called a weak ties. Uh, you don't share your personal issues with other people, but you're, you understand, you connect with them, you share information. As well as linking social support networks with are also linked ties where those bonding and bridging networks are linked to organizations and people who have economic power, social power, access to resources during, uh, disasters, et cetera, et cetera, all three are very important.
And to talk more about this whole process of building social connections. I am very honored to have Howard Lawrence with us today, uh, the Neighborhood Resilience Coordinator in Edmonton, Canada. Uh, I assume Howard is there and, uh, if he can be, uh, unmuted. Hi, how are you doing there? Thank you for joining us.
I'm with a group of other neighborhood animators down at a conference. And, uh, outside. So I get the clearest signal. So right. Well, thank you. Can you start off just by telling me, telling the group here about the, uh, uh, neighboring for climate and your efforts up in Edmonton for many years, trying to build these social connections at the neighborhood level.
Just how did that come about? What are you trying to accomplish? Yeah. So neighboring for climate is a specific. To the neighborhood relationship or the block level relationship that we try to foster. So there's many. Applications that we find, um, for the relationships that we're nurturing at the block and neighborhood level.
And we'll say more about that in a moment. The way this came about was probably 100 years ago where our city had an interesting innovation. That came out of the United States, um, called the. Social center movement, and it was basically citizens in neighborhoods or in human scale groups coming together to discuss the issues that were at hand, they would oftentimes meet at a school or then further down the road at a social center, a community hall and discuss the issues of the day.
Out of that form leadership. So every neighborhood had its leadership, but more importantly, because of the time that this was forming, the neighborhoods were at a human scale around the 5000 person 2000 household, um, scale. And so that's just carried on in Edmonton to today we have over 200 neighborhoods with neighborhood leadership.
Great. Thank you. And so how does your, your program neighbors connect with others, uh, and at the block level and at the neighborhood level, how, what, what processes have been used to do that? Yeah, so because of the gradual evolution of the human scale neighborhood, and I could point to and probably should point to Emily Talon's book.
She's an urban planner, her book called Neighborhoods, Oxford University Press. She talks about the everyday neighborhood and some of the qualities of the everyday neighborhood, essentially the neighborhoods that she talks about. And outlines are ones that our grandparents would be familiar with, or perhaps even in our childhood, the ones we grew up in.
Uh, places where there was a center, um, where there was a sense of community that was present in the neighborhood. Neighbors just looked out for each other. Um, there was some social or some, well, what we've come to call social infrastructure, some places to meet and some programs that drew us together. So, we have that long history of growing up in a city that has that kind of Framework at place.
And so our bureaucracy, our city programming has conformed to that kind of neighborhood based ethos. Um, so our positions, this meeting that I'm at this morning with 30, 40 other neighborhood focused. City builders so focusing on building at the neighborhood level Um, I think over time we realized that neighborhood has a subset which was the the neighbors that are nearby The 20 or so households around you.
Maybe it's a building floor a cul de sac or your block Um, and this is the place where importantly as bob has just outlined weak tie relationships reformed privacy barriers are honored You But people are there to help and be helpful. And so that's a, that's a, a level of neighborhood building that we focus on, and that can be done as it was Daniel Hornsby out of San Francisco, and actually Cupertino, California.
It can be a framework as easy as a block social or a street party that pulls people together. Annually, we say here that a block party is to a neighborhood. Um, Thanksgiving dinner is to family. Thank you. Thank you very much. So, if I understand it you. The city has Recruited and trained block connectors who go out and talk with everybody and meet people and share and then share the information they have they gain with others.
Can you talk a little bit about how that's organized and what how that works? Yeah, Importantly, we work with neighborhood leadership. So again, pointing to Emily Town and some of the things that she looks at in this everyday neighborhood is a definable neighborhood at a human scale. And then the thing that she talks about, which is quite rare.
She's she's notes that it's very rare in cities is in that definable neighborhood that there's actually leadership and, um, I'm going to say leadership around the human issues of the day. Emily. Right. Um, loneliness, raising of children, um, welcoming newcomers. So leadership that that focuses on the, um, the care of the individuals in the neighborhood.
So that's what we call our community leagues. And those people are the community executives. So we as city staff work primarily. With those individuals, because their goals for their own neighborhood, the one that they live in are similar to the city's goals of creating a sense of belonging on the part of the residents and opportunities for residents to contribute.
Oftentimes residents want to contribute in a small micro way. Um, And so we work with the community to help identify through a kind of engagement process. So that could be anything from well, frankly, it works really well when the community league has some kind of, um, membership or certificate of belonging that has on the.
It would say from the front side, you belong to this neighborhood on the back side. It would say what kind of interests do you have? How would you like to contribute? Is there anything else you'd like to say about, uh, your neighborhood and how we can work together? So we really do find a membership or a person like that, a membership coordinator on the lead team that will do that engagement.
And, uh, and we find hopefully we find. And the best of it is when this becomes a part of the culture. So we're continually finding what we might call point people, block connectors, canvassers, we'll call them anything, but somebody who takes the lead on the block to do that kind of engagement. And as I mentioned earlier, possibly, uh, encourage their block to have some kind of a block social once a year.
That's great. Thank you. And so what outcomes have you seen in the city and in these neighborhoods? What are they experienced? Having this kind of connections with others over time. Yeah, the, the, the before and the after really is. A resident of a neighborhood that doesn't know anyone that feels awkward in that they don't know the neighbors that are around them, there's a tacit awkwardness that they think, wow, it's strange that I live near these people, but I, I don't know them.
I may wave to them. Um, but generally, I think there's more to what should be going on in my life, my family's life, my household's life. So really the outcome is now they feel connected to those that live right around them. They know their names. They know they can ask for support. They, over time, have formed something quite similar to, um, an extended family connection.
You know, down deep in their soul, they feel a connection like that where they can trust, where they can count on, where they can, um, provide the kinds of Care and connection to that other person that they, you know, that they believe humans should have. So the outcome really is that kind of connection. And then that's manifest.
That would be the what the literature might be called the ambient relationship. It just is the vibe of the block or the neighborhood, but that from that ambient comes manifest. And this would be as you were talking about earlier. You know, some of the disaster sociology points to how, when crisis comes, people who have that ambient relationship, the vibe, step in, uh, and step in as if they were family.
I think Rebecca Solent's book, Paradise Made in Hell, she even cites examples where people are willing to lay down their lives for each other. And, uh, so what is it that creates that? It's that pre existing ambient relationship, neighbouring relationship that exists. So we've seen that manifest in a number of ways from, you know, stepping into disasters that are the everyday disasters.
You know, a person falls down the stairs. It's a disaster that happens, um, grieving together with somebody who's lost the loved one to raising Children together on the block. Um, so those are all the manifestations of this ambient thing called the neighboring relationship. Thank you very much for that. Um, let me ask sort of a sidebar question and just get your first in many communities.
People don't trust government. Um, they see our government. We're here to help and they go, Oh, my gosh, how do people rely on the city of Edmonton, then you're, you know, your role, how do they view that and how have you overcome those concerns. Yeah. Well, people don't trust much these days. And, uh, as Peter Block, who wrote the book, um, Community, oh, his book was entitled Community, I forget the subtitle to it.
But he said of what we do here, that we are the sometimes trusted local government. And we're as good as it gets. But with that sometimes trusted, the awareness that we're sometimes trusted, we really do work with Local leadership. So everything in the neighborhood is brokered through local leadership. So we really work to organize and strengthen local leadership in the neighborhood.
Um, and, and we stand, we In asset based community development terms we lead from behind
great. Thank you. Um, So if you were going to give a recommendation to the people who are involved here, how can you start a similar program? Uh in their community in their neighborhood, what what would you suggest? How what's the first three five steps? How do they get going? Well, I I think Um, I think we need to recover the word neighborhood And we need to extract it from the word community.
The word community is a great word, but it means it can mean a place. It can mean a group, it can mean the quality of relationships among a group, so the word can be diffuse and it can lose some of its power. So when we mean neighbourhood, i. e. a group of people that live together, probably at a human scale, so 1, 000, 2, 000 homes, 3, 000 people, we say the word neighbourhood.
So in our policies, in our practices, we say neighbourhood. So I belong to. The neighborhoods section of community services in Edmonton. So we say it. So if anybody asks, Well, what do you mean, what do you work at? I go neighborhoods section, as you'll notice my.
Yep, we just lost him. Hopefully he'll be back in a second. And while he's doing that, I'll talk a little bit he. Howard briefly mentioned the neighborhood empowerment network in San Francisco. Um, which is now been put on hold for a number of reasons, but this is the major urban area of San Francisco, obviously, and what they did for many years is they would close down streets, main streets and invite everybody out from their high rises into the street to have a potluck and people would get to know each other.
They do that a number of times. Uh, and then after, uh, they did that and people got to know each other, they form a local resilience network. In that neighborhood that would develop a resilient strategy for the neighborhood. They started off the Neighborhood Empowerment Network focused on earthquakes because it's San Francisco.
And then they started to realize that they were getting these extreme smoke events from wildfires in California and they expanded to deal with all sorts of disasters and stresses. And it was a very, very powerful program and the city had to, for funding reasons and others, Sort of change it substantially, but that's what Howard was talking about.
I don't see him back yet. Um, so let me just sort of summarize. He might not realize he's gone that, um, uh, the neighborhood program up in, uh, Edmonton is really a powerful program. They did some research during COVID pandemic and found, uh, very positive benefits. People felt like they had the connections of social supports, et cetera.
Uh, and it's more than just once a year having an event. That's the formal process that people are getting to know each other. People who like to walk dogs in the morning, uh, find others who walked like to walk dogs in the morning, and they're doing that together. Uh, people like to do woodwork, find other people who like to do woodworking, and they do that together.
So it's a very, very powerful program. And we sent you a, a video about it, uh, from the CBC network. Uh, if you get a chance to watch it, it's really great. Um, and, uh, you can get his they can look on their website. Also that they have more information. So, sorry, we lost him, but, um, uh, let's see. Um, uh, we'll go on now, uh, anyway, and, uh, see if he comes back.
But if not, we'll go on. So the 1st and most important, uh, uh, protective factor that these resilience networks really need to focus on is building, uh, social connections across boundaries in the communities. Bonding, bridging, and linking social connections, whatever you want to call them, strong and weak social connections.
That's vital for the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis. Uh, and as you do that help people learn how to communicate with each other They get back up at communication systems phones, etc Uh, and everybody knows Everybody else in the community so they know who might need help. Um, There's a group up in vancouver bc or maybe it was victoria I can't remember british columbia that uh actually created their uh resilience hub So to speak that they created in neighborhoods was a park bench You Uh, and under the park bench was the, uh, a box, a block box that had everyone's name, phone number, and address and something about them written down so that when there was a disaster of any kind, everybody could go to the park bench.
There was also a way to recharge their solar system they could put up to recharge their phones, etc. And they could look at that and go, Oh, Sally up on 30th street. She's in a wheelchair. She needs help. Okay. Let's go get, let's go help Sally. Um, and George over here, uh, he's very elderly. He can't move very far.
Okay. Can somebody go help George? And that's how, uh, the social connections really begin to help. And they actually end up being resilience. Uh, hub, so to speak, but you don't need a physical building to do that. That program is very, very, very helpful. Um, uh, there's much more about that in the, uh, initiatives that, um, uh, the, the handbooks we'll, we'll talk about in a second.
The 2nd, again, related, uh, protective factor is ensure a just transition. By creating protective and supportive and healthy, supportive, climate resilient, low emission, physical built conditions, parks, um, in transportation, housing, open space, economic conditions, and ecological conditions. What we have seen is when residents get engaged with that, rather than allowing businesses and governments to just do that on their own and ask for a little feedback from the public.
People actually. Find hope they find meaning in it and they find they begin to build hope which Addresses and prevents and addresses mental health and psychosocial issues And can really be very powerful when doing that At the same time you want to help everyone understand mental wellness and resilience this builds on health literacy So you help everyone understand how trauma and toxic stresses can affect their mind body emotions and behaviors you do this in simple simple steps Age and culturally appropriate ways, um, and how it can affect the behavior and thinking of groups When you see groups doing all sorts of things as we see in many parts of the world today They're traumatized many of them They're they're they're not thinking straight because they're just in this self protective survival mode and adapting maladaptive coping mechanisms that they think are going to help them, but actually aren't.
They're harming themselves and or others. Um, and then you teach, uh, collect individual and collective resilience skills, um, helping people learn presencing skills, as we talked about last week to calm their mind, body and emotions when they're distressed. And these purposing skills or adversity based growth skills that hot to help people learn how to learn.
From these adversities, what can we take from them? What can we learn? How can we admit, how can we use that information to improve conditions? The fourth is foster engagement and practices that promote mental wellness and resilience, and I think I've mentioned this in the past, another example of a group up in Canada, that the neighborhood was depressed, the residents decided, because of smoke events from wildfires.
So they got together and the residents became actors in a little play they put on that made everybody laugh. And they said, wow, we can do this. Why, why can't others? So they put together a manual and how to run a play that helps people, neighborhood resilience, how to help people laugh in the middle of distress.
And it's very effective, but encourage you to, to, to use that. But that's just one example. Uh, and as we just talked about, uh, you can start off by, uh, with these healing events, these group and community minded healing events, but you want to continue to offer them and many other kinds of healing events.
Events because sometimes people won't go and share things with others, but there's nature based healing Uh, there's animal based healing somatic healing arts healing etc that you can do So the more you can engage these and community start with whatever makes sense They might start with building social connections like happened up in Edmonton, uh, and then get into these healing events later.
Uh, but you can start with whatever you want, but all five are going to be really important. So we're going to take a breakout room now, and I want you to share, uh, just again, introduce yourself, but then share what you've taken away so far from today. Uh, do you think you can build social connections in your community?
Discuss how you can maybe implement something similar or different. Identify key questions. And at the close, please, uh, designate someone to post the key issues or questions in chat, and then we're going to just have a discussion about these, uh, at the end. So, uh, Jesse's going to divide you into groups of three to five again, and we'll see you in ten minutes, and then after that, we're going to have a time for all of us to talk.
Jesse, it's all yours. Appreciate it, Bob. Opening up the breakout rooms again, if anybody needs anything, feel free to come back to us in the main room. We look forward to seeing you in about ten minutes.
Welcome back, everyone. I hope you had a few minutes, a good talk for those few minutes. I know it's not a lot of time, uh, in the two session short community practice. We don't have a lot of time to do that. But, um, if you have any key points that came up, questions you have, post them in chat now, if you would.
Uh, and Christian will start to read some of those out and we can have a discussion about it. Um, but while you're doing that, thinking about that. Also, if you actually tried or thought about organized writing a vision and, uh, mission statement for a local resilience coordinating network and. Maybe started talking about that with somebody else in your committee.
Sure. If you did that in chat also, uh, and we can do that. But just while we're waiting for Christian, uh, for those to come in and Christian to have a question, let's just follow up on the issue of mistrust of government. I think Howard's very right. It's that's everywhere. Um, and, uh, the, uh, I don't think you have to governments don't have to run these programs at all.
Um, they, many of them are just run by local nonprofits or some start with universities, uh, and they spin them off to nonprofits. Um, uh, that is find an entity in your community that people trust, uh, that people have respect for, and that can be the, uh, the fiscal sponsor, if you will, but what's really key for these transformational resilience coordinating networks is to have this broad and diverse.
steering committee or leadership council, whatever you want to call it. They're the decision makers. Um, so the differences between community led and community based can, and this is how I define it. Community based means a non profit or a government agency, uh, uh, runs the program. They go out and get funding for the program and they're responsible to tell their funders how they use the funding.
So they might organize a community group. Resilience network, uh, get feedback from them, et cetera. But the, the group is not the ultimate decision makers. They, this nonprofit or government is the ultimate decision maker because they're responsible to their funders to decide how to do that. And when the funding ends, often the community does not feel ownership of it and the initiative ends.
When, uh, the community group, the steering committee, the resilience council, whatever you want to call it, makes the decisions and the entity that's got gathered the funding is just a fiscal sponsor, if you will, maybe got it together, but then steps back. That's a community led initiative. And often when the initiative ends, uh, it goes on.
In fact, a number of initiatives like this, Peace for Tarpon in Tarpon Springs, uh, Florida, uh, which is now the, they call themselves one of the first trauma informed communities in the U. S., they don't even, they started without funding, and every time funding is, uh, they've gotten funding, it actually has set them back some, or met most of the time, so they prefer to operate without funding.
Now, they have a, uh, somebody who can run this as a volunteer, uh, Robin Sanger, that often is not the case, but be careful about how that's taken. So work with government agencies when it makes sense, when people trust it, etc. And even if governments are involved, make sure they take the proper role. They take that role, but let the community be the decision makers, the planners, they know what's best.
And that's what Howard, I think, shared. Christian, any questions that came up yet? Uh, no questions per se, but we have some great insights coming out of our breakout rooms here. Somebody mentions, um, hosting a driveway happy hour to connect with people in the neighborhood in a way that's fun and attractive to folks.
Um, some conversation around it. Systems building in rural versus urban communities and tailoring that approach based on our community. Um, another idea, parent cafes, I imagine bringing parents together. Um, yes, a great point about needing shared or streamlined communication on topics of mutual interest.
Um, there are often several groups doing similar work, but due to differences in language or communication, it seems like they're not necessarily aligned. Uh, a point about, uh, being familiar with structuring meetings and, uh, a realization that, um, we needed to create a looser structure so attendees feel empowered to become the leadership of organic local initiatives fantastic.
Another point about being more informal, less scripted with our connections in the community.
Excellent. We did have a question come up during the breakout rooms about funding and navigating trust in government. Do you have, can you speak to that a little bit, Bob? Yeah, well, we just sort of talked about that in part, but I think the funding part is really critical that often in many communities, the only place you're going to get funding from initially is from government.
Um, at least that's what we think. Uh, and people, again, when they do get funding from government or government agency they have says they have funding. People get intimidated or they don't want to engage. So again, I think we've talked about this last weekend in the handbooks will give you and I'll talk about that in a second.
Um, we talk about this, that it's best to try to start with local funding from local donors. People can give 25 cents or just, um, share their time and effort. Bring food for a potluck to get people together. That they're funding it, if you will. Um, uh, and in other ways, have people, local residents, uh, provide the support for the initiative to get it underway.
Um, and, uh, and you can ask for donations from folks. Maybe there's some other people that will offer a hundred dollars or more, depending on the status of the community, but, uh, really start at, at the beginning. Build from the bottom up, even your funding strategies. And then once you get a little bit better organized, you have a clearer idea of what you're trying to do, then you might want to reach out to a local government agency.
But make it clear that it's your strategy, your vision that you're trying to achieve, not something they want you to do. And that's how you remain, you build and sustain trust in the community, that it's really Community led, uh, and not government led. Uh, and the same is true, as I said, for nonprofits, NGOs, or even universities, make sure that the community leads it and that those are simply fiscal sponsors and others who can provide technical assistance and expertise in different ways.
But, um, uh, start from the bottom up and see who can support this initially, uh, there. Um, uh, let me make one other comment. Unless there's other comments. Christian, you want to add? I'll make one other comment and we'll close the day. Anything else? Yes, we had a, uh, kind of a general question. Um, what interaction has the ICRC had with the COP2 network?
My apologies if I'm misreading that. And the USDN, the Urban Sustainability Directors Network. Well, the USDN is a co sponsor of this initiative and, uh, we've talked with them and engaged with them in the, uh, many times in, in the past and I appreciate their, uh, their support. They're focused mostly on physical resilience hubs, um, USDN over the time, and we are, uh, and we support that as long as those physical hubs really focus on trying to build the horizontal infrastructure in the communities that we're talking about, the connections between everybody.
Uh, physical hubs themselves of resilience hubs, resilient centers, um, can, uh, can be very helpful in certain kinds of disasters and and other kinds, not very helpful. Um, if you have a wildfire, the physical hub can burn down itself, or people simply can't get there. What what would a physical building done in western North Carolina when recently that was damaged, it would likely damaged also, um, so it's the social infrastructure that they can build through that initiative, that kind of process.
That's really critical. So people, even regardless of whether there's a physical hub there, they can help each other along the way. And the race to resilience initiative, it's the, if it's the. COP that we're talking about is part of the UN program, the UN High Level Climate Champion program. So we are part of that.
I sit in on meetings, uh, talking about that. Uh, that's a different discussion because the UN issues are, uh, there's other questions about that, but, but we are connected to that, um, uh, very much. So if there's other questions, post them in chat. I want to just take the last 10 minutes to sort of summarize a few things.
Thank you for all those questions and points though. One thing, if you're developing a strategy, what we call a multi systemic strategy, meaning addressing multiple issues at once, Use what's called adaptive management. You start by choosing the outcomes you desire. Here's an example, following up on what we just were talking about with Howard Lawrence.
An outcome might be everyone in our neighborhood has at least one person they can count on for practical assistance and emotional support. That's an outcome. Okay. Then you collect information. How many people have at least one person they can count on for social support and where do those people reside and how many people do not have that?
Then you establish some interventions. You hold potlucks to help people meet or help people engage in age and cultural Appropriate activities to develop those social supports and you provide them with resources transportation to get their uh lunch During the so they can come and see it as a place to uh to also Have food then you implement the intervention you recruit and train people to organize potlucks as they've done up in Edmonton and many other communities Or you train people to hold events and how to provide resources to people, then you assess and evaluate the outcomes.
So you do these potlucks or whatever it might be, and you evaluate how many people develop new social connections. It might take you six months or a year to do that and say, do you now have somebody that you, uh, a new person that you, uh, that provides you practical assistance or emotional support? And you sort of evaluate that, and, uh, you continually learn, change, and adapt.
When things don't go as planned, you know, this didn't work. We didn't develop social connections around this. What else can we do? So you want to honestly assess your strategies, uh, determine what did and did not work and think anew. That's adaptive management. And that's how you can develop these strategies.
Whoops. This is out of place. Um, I want to just cover one other quick thing that was in those slides last week, but we didn't have time. How do you communicate on these issues? Uh, with other residents, including skeptics, you know, I don't want to be involved with other people, or they're skeptical about the climate ecosystem, biodiversity crisis, whatever it might be.
First, facts, figures, scientific data, they do not convince many people. And it's because human decision makers are mostly influenced by emotions and mental models. That is, our deeply held assumptions and beliefs. So there's the old saying, believing is seeing. What we believe is what we see. We'd screen out other things.
So instead, share your own personal experiences with others when you're trying to get neighbors involved. Ask them what their lives are like, their experience, and what they're concerned about and focused on, and then search for common ground. Things you have for common you can focus on. Maybe it's gardening.
Maybe it's your kids, maybe it's the schools, whatever it might be, just find that common ground, uh, and then focus communications on things that the other people care about and are being affected by, by hotter temperatures or storms or floods or extreme weather or whatever it might be. So yeah, I love, you know, I'm really concerned about my kids also, uh, boy, and they're really, you know, we don't have a good way to take care of them when the temperatures get hot and they're in schools, etc.
Yeah. Focus in on things that you're both have in common and avoid when you have to avoid terms like climate change, global warming, the climate ecosystem, biodiversity crisis. I use that here. We don't use it talking to the general public too much, uh, or even greenhouse gases because for many, they're too abstract or they don't resonate or they might elicit negative reactions.
Uh, greenhouse gases has something to do with something way up in the atmosphere has nothing to do with me in my life You know, um, so instead you can use terms like extreme weather environmental changes or natural processes It doesn't matter what the cause is of the hotter temperatures more Uh, uh disasters, etc.
Just call it a natural process, but it's happening Uh, and people can see that and others ish terms that resonate with people And so instead, remember that seeing is believing. Uh, flipping that around. That is to say, when people engage in activities that address practical issues they care about, and they get engaged in building resilience and regenerating local conditions, that is, getting, do, getting engaged in activities that prevent harm to them, their family, children, the community, that is, prevent harm to the things they care about, can be a very powerful way to help people understand what's going on and surmount differences.
When people engage in those activities and they see progress, it builds understanding, which creates a positive, uh, cycle. It creates further engagement in those practices. So, uh, that's how you deal with, with the residents you don't know and you help others. And if you get a Resilience Coordinating Network together, I encourage you to practice communications like this early on with your group and practice conflict resolution.
Also, there's much more details about these five protective factors in the handbook on the five potential protective factors involved with building population, mental wellness and transformation resilience that is given to all transformation resilience coordinating networks that we work with. And more information about how to weave those protective factors into a public health strategies will is available in the handbook for perspective and emerging transformational resilience coordinate networks.
So, just again, to reiterate and summarize, we've launched the UN high level climate champion race to resilience initiative. Uh, and we're trying to help organize and operate, uh, help you do this, uh, uh, transformation resilience core networks around the world. If you're interested in participating in organizing a community network, uh, contact us, uh, in the application forums on our website, I'll show it in a second to let us know you want to, uh, um, form a new one or expand an existing group to become a transformation resilience network.
And we'll designate you as a perspective. Network and when you do that, we will provide you with a special handbook that includes some, but way more information that we've covered the last two weeks about how to do this will provide technical assistance, phone and email, uh, and involve you the community practice with others who are doing the same kind of work.
It'll be an ongoing, not just a two part community practice, um, uh, and help you form a steering committee. And if you have a steering committee, develop a vision, mission goals and operating procedures. Once you have that in place, a steering committee, uh, is formed, uh, and the steering committee now wants to develop a strategy to build population level mental wellness and transformation resilience.
We'll designate you or invite you to be designated as an emerging TRNC, um, TRCN, and we'll provide you with a different handbook on how to develop these strategies, technical assistance, and involving the community practice with others who are also developing their strategies. Once a strategy is ready and being ready to implement, we will invite you to become a commissioned PRCN, uh, and we'll, we'll designate you as that, uh, and we'll provide you a different, a third handbook and technical assistance and involve you with the community practice with others.
That are now involved with implementing and continuing improving their strategy. So a summary of key points, uh, there are many ways you can help residents begin to heal their trauma. The community should meet, choose one that meets the needs and cultures and resources of the community. And Transformation Resilience Core Network should use the information that is generated to develop multidisciplinary and multisystemic strategies, use those buzzwords, that actively engage residents in strengthening existing protective factors and forming new ones.
Engaging residents in enhancing assets and strength is far more powerful. far more effective than trying to identify and eliminate risks, fix deficits, treat individuals with symptoms of pathology, and engagement in real world pro social activities that help others, peoples, or help the natural environment, is really vital to help many people find the meaning and purpose in life that helps prevent and heal mental health problems.
And organizing transformation resilience coordinating networks in neighborhoods and communities worldwide, we think is One of the most, if not the most effective way to accomplish this, and you can make this happen in your community or neighborhood. So I just want to remind you again, we're going to hold one, a special one hour open session, uh, on Wednesday, November 13th.
Uh, it's at the same time, but we'll get the time right for the UK this time and other parts. We apparently we had that wrong. We apologize. There's no agenda. There's no material presented. It's just a chance for you to really to get together and talk among each other. Uh, meet, ask questions, talk about how do I get this going in my community, etc.
So mark it on your calendar and we'll send a reminder before that also. So we invite you to join this movement. If you want to form a new Transformation Resilience Coordinating Network in your neighborhood or community or expanding an existing group to become a TRCN to address, specifically address the climate ecosystem biodiversity crisis, please apply at the link found on this webpage, itrc.org, current events and news. We'll send this out afterwards. This link also. So think about that. If you want to try to form a resilience network or expand an existing group to become one, please let us know. We'll designate you as a prospective group or an emerging group after a little bit of conversation.
Uh, and we'll try to help your, your efforts as we go. So I want to thank you for attending today's, uh, community practice and last week's and, uh, please let us know if you have questions, send a question to tr at trig hyphen CLI dot org. And we wish you all the best and hope that many of you contact us with interest in forming a transformation resilience core network.
So with that, I say, good luck. Good luck. Goodbye. And have a good week. Everyone. Thank you for joining us. Bye. Bye.
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