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Welcome in the New Year by Increasing the Resilience of your Family, your Organization, & your Community
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Embedding the Culture & Systems of Organizational Resilience
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Whether you are welcoming in 2012 on January 1 or welcoming in 4709 on January 23, it is an important time to reflect on the past year while planning for the year to come. Many of us use the New Year as a time to "begin again" or make "resolutions." ICOR's challenge to each of you is to figure out how you can increase the resilience of your family, the organization you work for, and the community in which you reside. The focus of this ICORrespondence Newsletter is to share with you some resources you can use to meet this challenge. As business continuity, crisis management and risk management professionals the focus of your job in the private sector is to mitigate risk and to keep your organization running during a crisis or disaster. As emergency managers and police and fire first responders your job is to protect the public during a disaster that affects the community. But one of the most important things you can do is to ensure that your family is safe and secure in the case of a crisis or disaster. If you have a resource to share with the ICOR world-wide community, post it on ICOR's LInkedIn page! Happy New Year! Lynnda Nelson, PresidentThe International Consortium for Organizational Resilience Lynnda@theicor.org 866.765.8321 US/Canada +1630.705.0910 International Calls
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Increasing the Resilience of Your Family
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Family Resiliency: Building Strengths to Meet Life's Challenges
Strong families help children learn resilient behavior, according to researcher Mark Roosa, when they teach problem-solving skills and provide positive, noncritical support and a sense of togetherness. The values and skills learned at home give individuals the power to shape their lives.
Families that learn how to cope with challenges and meet individual needs are more resilient to stress and crisis. Healthy families solve problems with cooperation, creative brainstorming, and openness to others, according to David Reiss.
Other researchers, including James Garbarino, emphasize the role of social support and connectedness (versus isolation) in family resiliency. Families develop unique resiliency patterns over time. Hamilton I. McCubbin worked with other researchers to extend Reuben Hill's ABCX model of family crisis to focus on the impact of a family's long-term efforts to adapt .
A family's ability to recover from crisis is influenced by additional life stressors and by family perceptions. A family's goals, values, problem solving skills, and support networks impact its adaptation to long-term stress and crisis. Read the complete article...
A New Tool to Measure the Resilience of Households
A new analysis tool that measures how resilient a household is under severe stress will help humanitarian agencies design aid for beneficiaries based on the extent of their vulnerability. The concept was developed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the Florence University, in Italy, using data from the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).
Resilience in humanitarian terms is a "measure of the ability of a system to withstand stresses and shocks in an uncertain world" and has only recently started being applied as a concept in food security issues, according to a paper by Alinovi and his collaborators on the project.
"The idea is that this concept could complement the early warning systems (EWS) approach. The EWS tries to predict crises, while the resilience framework tries to assess the current state of health of a food system and hence its ability to withstand shocks should they occur," said the paper. Read the complete study...
Do 1 Thing...
Ever feel overwhelmed with all the "stuff you should do?" Do 1 Thing was created for you!
A Little About www.do1thing.us
Do 1 thing is a 12-month program that makes it easier for you to prepare yourself, your family, and your community for emergencies and disasters.
Most people are aware of the need to prepare for emergencies and disasters, but don't get started because emergency preparedness is such a big job. The do1thing program breaks the job of emergency preparedness into 12 smaller pieces.
Each month, the program focuses on one area of emergency preparedness and provides a variety of actions that you can take to become better prepared. If you do 1 thing each month, by the time a year has passed, you will have taken big steps towards preparing yourself, your family, and your community for emergencies and disasters.
The program cycle repeats each year so you can jump in anytime.The site also encourages you to Do 1 Thing for someone else. Who can benefit from your expertise? Family members? Neighbors?
Family Disaster Plan
There are many great resources for building your family's disaster plan. Check out one or more of the following and get started today!
Red Cross
FEMA
Ready.Gov
Disaster Center
www.72Hours.org In a major disaster, it might be several days before vital services are restored. Imagine that you have no electricity, no gas, no water and no telephone service.
Imagine that all the businesses are closed and you are without any kind of
emergency services. What will you do until help arrives?
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| Increasing the Resilience of Your Organization |
The focus of this section will not be the need for a business continuity, risk management, and crisis management program at your organization. If you don't have one, there are plenty of resources available on the Internet to determine what you need. The focus instead will be on how to increase the resilience of the members of the organization. There is a significant amount of research and work becoming available regarding this important concept. Some of these links are to consultants - ICOR is not recommending any of these organizations or their consulting, but has found the information they provide valuable. The current economic state around much of the world is challenging, both for organisations and individuals. Organisations need capable and strong leaders at all levels. People need to be able to handle the pressures of these difficult times and maintain their ability to deliver at work and live a balanced and productive life. This article provides an overview of Emotional Intelligence and the part it plays in shaping quality leadership and good interpersonal skills. It then looks at the 6 Components of Personal Resilience which help individuals handle difficult times. Use their Personal Resilience Profile to see how you score! Read more...Personal Resilience Questionnaire
It is important that organization's have the right people in the right places at the right time making those critical decisions during a crisis situation. Human Resources departments should utilize tools like the Personal Resilience Questionnaire to determine who should be part of an organization's crisis management team. There are many other studies being conducted by universities throughout the world, but most of the work is available at cost so was not included here. |
| Increasing the Resilience of Your Community | Communities are only as resilient as the organizations that comprise them. There are many initiatives available where we can learn how to increase the resilience of our communities by increasing the resilience of the organizations in them.
Community and Regional Resilience Institute (CARRI)
The Community and Regional Resilience Institute (CARRI) is dedicated to research and practical application across the full continuum of prevention, protection, response and recovery to enhance the resilience of communities and regions.
When a community is truly resilient, it should be able to avoid the cascading system failures to help minimize any disaster's disruption to everyday life and the local economy. A resilient community is not only prepared to help prevent or minimize the loss or damage to life, property and the environment, but also it has the ability to quickly return citizens to work, reopen businesses, and restore other essential services needed for a full and swift economic recovery. Find out more...
Learning for Sustainability This site aims to provide a practical resource for those who work with communities (in the wider sense of the term) to help them identify and adopt more sustainable practices.
Resilient communities are capable of bouncing back from adverse situations. They can do this by actively influencing and preparing for economic, social and environmental change. When times are bad they can call upon the myriad of resouces that make them a healthy community. A high level of social capital means that they have access to good information and communication networks in times of difficulty, and can call upon a wide range of resources. Find out more...
Tulsa Partners: Tulsa Citizen Corps and Disaster Resistant Business Council Their mission is to create a disaster-resistant community and improve Tulsans' safety and well-being by reducing deaths, injuries, property damage, environmental and other losses from natural or technological hazards.
They have conducted several key initiatives including the following:
- A Day Without Business
- A Day Without Hospitals
- A Day Without Day Care Centers
- Long Term Care Facilities Workshop
Find out more by visiting their website: http://tulsapartners.org/tpi/
Initiate a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT)
The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Program educates people about disaster preparedness for hazards that may impact their area and trains them in basic disaster response skills, such as fire safety, light search and rescue, team organization, and disaster medical operations.
Using the training learned in the classroom and during exercises, CERT members can assist others in their neighborhood or workplace following an event when professional responders are not immediately available to help. CERT members also are encouraged to support emergency response agencies by taking a more active role in emergency preparedness projects in their community. Find out more...
New York Disaster Interfaith Services
NYDIS provides mitigation education and preparedness training to clergy, religious leaders, houses of worship, and faith-based agencies, building their capacity to respond to all hazards with spiritual care, emergency relief, and long-term recovery services.
Through faith-based partnerships as well as government and community-based agencies, NYDIS provides preparedness planning, facilitates service coordination, and equips faith communities and their leaders for readiness, response, and recovery. Our goal is to promote personal, congregational, and community
resiliency.
To find out more go to http://www.nydis.org/disasterplanning/1.php
Healthy & Resilient Communities - Living the Future Now
An interesting website with anecdotal information based on work done in communities throughout the world. http://learningforsustainability.net/susdev/resilience.php
Creating Resilient Communities
Creating Resilient Communities look at the intersection between planning, hazard mitigation, and conservation to help the region prepare to resist damages from hurricanes, storm surge and floods, including loss of property, income and lives. Find out more...
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If you would like to submit an article or presentation for a future ICORrespondence Newsletter submit it to Lynnda@theicor.org.
Sincerely,
Lynnda Nelson, President
The International Consortium for Organizational Resilience | |
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