Category: Kids: a Fundamental Building Block in Community Resiliency

Four decades of organizing and administering Canadian and United States high school and university students’ collaborative work with local professionals, municipal staff, business owners, and neighborhood activists informs Living2Learn’s efforts to integrate community-driven, project-based learning into K-12 classes. Working shoulder-to-shoulder with community members, students give new meaning to education, for that matter to life-long learning.…

Before delving into building a community’s resilience on the resilience traits found in youth we need to recognize (admit to) a number of facts too often taken for granted. Kids are the future. They are freer, more innovative thinkers than many adults. Their own, personal resilience is reinforced as they contribute to that of their…

A longitudinal study spanning 40+ years (Werner, 2005), and supported by numerous shorter studies (Zolkoski and Bullock, 2012; Werner, 2005a), illuminates the resilience potential in youngsters. What is intriguing is that those characteristics are reflective of the attributes found in resilient communities. My  hypothesis is that the social and environmental attributes that foster resiliency in…

Resiliency is in relationships: people knowing people; people trusting people. Resiliency relationships develop over weeks, months, and even years. They grow out of those daily routines that have people regularly crossing paths with such frequency that they cannot help but take the opportunity to come to know of and about each other. Resiliency relationships are…