The Rockefeller Foundation provided grants for 100 cities around the world to address resilience in their community. My home town, Pittsburgh was recently named one of those cities.
For the Foundation their grants are intended to help these communities understand and develop resilience plans that develop both prevention and response strategies for potential natural and man made environmental and social events. These can include everything from fires and floods to homelessness and unemployment.
Of course, if there is one city that is the poster child for resilience, that has got to be Pittsburgh. Starting with its early history as the battleground for control of the 18th century frontier to more recent challenges such as the closing of the steel mills in the 1980s, Pittsburgh has endured and transformed herself into a globally recognized “best place to live.”
The connection to community and personal resilience is not as far fetched as one might think, either. Identifying potential stressors and developing strategies to avoid, manage and learn from challenging events is the cornerstone of both models and if we can help our communities deal with disaster better, than that can only help make our lives and world a healthier place to be.
Check out the Rockefeller Foundation’s Resilient City page to see if your city is working on this important topic.
© Richard Citrin, All rights reserved, 2015
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