Building blocks for community resilience
- Individual recovery
- Self determination
- Social networks
- Community cohesion
The Church has a recognised role in developing social assets.
Core services
Resilience needs core services:
- Healthcare
- Education, especially at primary level
- Infrastructure
- Physical resources
- Livelihoods
The Church is a main provider of front-line services and promoter of economic empowerment.
Reflection & learning
Resilience requires community reflection and learning:
- Local beliefs about the causation of disaster may need to be challenged
- Traditional practices may need to be rethought
- New skills, knowledge and information may be needed
Clergy and other respected church leaders are in a key position to influence practicses and beliefs.
The Anglican Alliance works to enhance the dedicated work of local Churches in resilience. Our role is to identify and record what happens, learn the lessons, and share them with the rest of the Communion.
And we’re working with faith partners to show the effectiveness of the work of faith communities as part of the Learning Hub Advisory Group on “Resilience in Humanitarian and Disaster Situations” organised by the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities. We facilitated Anglican contributions to a publication making the case for faith communities published by the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford.
There’s a lot more to understand about resilience, and the Church’s role in it The humanitarian community has recognised that faith and religious practices have a powerful impact in enabling people to recover and move on after disasters. You can use the links and downloads on this page to read more about it.