Purpose and overview

The guidance explains the IFRC’s definition of and approach to building community resilience, sets out key messages, and suggests how to communicate the rationale for promoting community resilience to a broad audience. The document draws on the IFRC’s Framework for Community Resilience and the strategy behind the One Billion Coalition for Resilience.

Usage: The messages and evidence in this guidance should inform discussions, plans and decision-making in national disaster risk reduction or disaster management platforms, policy forums, community consultations, and project design.

See also:

• Road Map to Community Resilience: Operationalizing the Framework for Community Resilience and its summary which is the step-by-step guidance on how to operationalize the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ Framework for Community Resilience.
• Community resilience page

Purpose

The Road Map provides step-by-step guidance on how to operationalize the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ Framework for Community Resilience (FCR). It will help you coordinate programme teams in your National Society or branch and work alongside other stakeholders to enable communities to become more resilient in the face of threats.

Overview

The Road Map consists of an introduction and four sections that describe the main stages on the journey to build community resilience.

• Orientation explains what is different about resilience and why resilience is relevant to communities in all contexts, as well as to National Society and IFRC staff and volunteers.
• Stage 1: Engaging and connecting explains how to involve all sectors of the National Society in resilience-building, how to involve communities, and how to link communities to other actors. It also provides advice on which communities to work with, and how to help them define and establish internal roles and responsibilities during the stages that follow.
• Stage 2: Understanding risk explains how to guide communities when they assess their risks and measure their resilience.
• Stage 3: Taking action for resilience explains how to guide communities when they develop and implement a resilience-building action plan.
• Stage 4: Learning explains how to guide communities as they learn how to track their progress, learn from mistakes, and adapt their action plans accordingly.
• Reference Sheets provide more details. They are designed to assist readers less familiar with resilience-building. Reference Sheet A provides a reading list.

Each Stage includes:

• Milestones to aim for and to gauge progress.
• Steps that should be taken to reach the milestones.
• Landmarks to guide the approach.

It is necessary to contextualize this guidance document in its setting (developed or less developed contexts, urban, peri-urban or rural settlements, settled or migrant communities, etc.), taking into account socio-political and economic factors that affect how people think and behave. Each journey will be different, reflecting a community’s identity, time, location, and the community members.

Usage: Guideline for implementation

Audience: National Society staff and volunteers, and IFRC and its operational partners, who want to help communities become safer and stronger.

See also:

• The summary of this document [0.7 MB, pdf, 12 pages]
• IFRC and community resilience: Communication guidance for National Society [1.3 MB, pdf, 28 pages]
• Community Resilience page