Forum 1:  22^nd July – Topic: Volunteerism and Community Resilience – Locally Owned Solutions Delivering Impact

There is a growing realization that emergency resilience activity should be aligned with broader community resilience building and vice versa. The activity and approaches to build community cohesion and tackle, for example, health and well-being issues such as loneliness and isolation of older people, also build community resilience in response to crisis. Building resilience within communities is about engaging community members in considering the challenges faced by the diverse parts of a community that make up its totality. It is about following through on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aspiration ‘that no one will be left behind’. Volunteering makes connections, builds networks and stakeholder relationships, aids communication and supports cooperation, vital components for community resilience. The people power of volunteers has been shown to anticipate and challenge issues, take ownership and responsibility, identify novel solutions and give leadership to transformational change.

Key Presenters: Bianca Fadel, (Brazil) Doctoral Researcher, Northumbria University, Centre for International Development (UK) and Alice Chadwick, (UK) Doctoral Researcher University of Bath, Social and Policy Studies (UK)