Moving the Needle Towards Resilient Communities: A Field Guide for Equitable, Community-Led Resilience Planning

This field guide offers practical guidance for readers to initiate and engage in resilience planning with their communities in a structured, deliberative way that emphasizes equity. The contents revolve around lessons learned from The Resilience Adaptation Feasibility Tool (RAFT) on-the-ground community initiative to advance resilience across communities in Virginia. Chapters provide background about resilience planning; a starting point for conducting holistic assessment of a community’s resilience with a focus on equity; recommendations for establishing an infrastructure for long- term commitment to resilience; and suggestions for identifying and planning activities and projects to build momentum for achieving resilience outcomes. The format offers an easy read for non-technical audiences such as community planners, community leaders, or nonprofit agency staff to quickly and efficiently get the guidance they need for community-based, equity-focused resilience planning.