Team Resilience

While interviewing Vermonters on the topic of resilience and connectivity, the  unity between Vermonters began to unravel through each story. The common values and beliefs Vermonters hold are truly representative of the tight knit communities found in each Vermont town. The following are just a few insights on what Vermonters cherish about their state and how this ties in with resilience building.

 

Ben Rose — Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security

 

“Why has Vermont done relatively well? I think the answer has to do with the integrity and strength of our communities. I think that in Vermont, we have high functioning local government and community engagement. That allows us to respond at local, regional, and state levels in fairly nimble, flexible and organic ways...the next thing will be something different that we didn’t see coming.”

“We have to respond as a community, and in Vermont, I think the basic fabric of our community is pretty strong and that is a form of resilience that is hard to quantify. In Vermont, when this storm happened, people started rolling up their sleeves and getting to work. Nobody sat back and waited for the federal government. Generally, it was ‘lets get rebuilding our community.’ It was a very proactive response.”

 

Nathaly Agosto Filion — Institute for Sustainabile Communities

 

“Resilience isn’t an end-goal but a process …”

 

"In the state of VT, just because we already are a state that depends so much on social capital, and people know each other where I don’t think anyone is probably more than 4 steps removed from somebody else in the state, is the feeling of being here for long enough that we can sort of get that...I think it’s a really big part of that, those relationships and that those existing levels of trust that are part of how we sort of do or own on a day to day basis that I think are a huge part of what can help us continue to grow more resilient.”

 

Deb Perry — Institute for Sustainable Communities

 

“Resilience is really very tricky. It’s not something that one person or one organization could ever say, ‘I’m going to go out and do all this.’ So, really, the only thing that I see possible is that many organizations are working but that they’re working in a way that’s coordinated and networked together. The danger in just having a lot of organizations go off and work on without that network is that there’s a lot of redundancy and you’re not sharing what you learned … it is just inefficient and you’re not learning together. So, ideally, there is a network and there’s some way that people are bringing information back … and that that network helps continue the collaborations between different sectors.”

 

“[Making connections is] an important thing … we think that sustainable solutions are about finding those points of integration … we (ISC) are always talking about finding those integrative solutions.”

“What stands out for me is that the smallness of our communities is definitely an asset. We know each other and have very strong social networks because we are relatively small. And we have very good access to our government and our leaders … Our natural resources are a great asset … we still have a lot of intact ecosystems, so we still have a lot of green infrastructure … we get the benefit of ecosystem services from our intact ecosystems … we have a history of active citizenship and local democracy … people generally engage at the community level.”

 

 

Bill Roper — Founder & President of Slow Communities; Consultant for High Meadows Fund

 

“The process [of resilience] will lead to greater ability, greater capacity to respond to climate change events or whatever disaster befalls a community.”

 

“The word ‘group’ doesn’t reflect the fact that resilience can reside in individuals. When you look at building resilience within communities you do look at certain groups … but there’s a lot of individuals that will be responsible for helping a community respond to events.”

 

“The key to addressing climate change events is at the local level. There’s been a lot of discussion about building greater coordination and capacity at the state level … that makes a lot of sense but when the damage occurs in a community it occurs at a local level and requires local responses.”

 

“If you don’t have citizens that care about each other and their community then you lose a lot of that local capability to address those emergencies and you’ll also lack critical local knowledge essential to "smart" quick response.”