2018 Bay Area Regional Community Resilience Summit
2018 Bay Area Regional Community Resilience Summit
Executive Summary
On May 16th, the Neighborhood Empowerment Network and the Earthquake Country Alliance hosted the 2018 Bay Area Regional Community Resilience Summit on May 16th in San Francisco City Hall’s North Light Court.
The Summit, which was attended by 147 guests from 23 cities, four states and two countries, addressed the importance of applying a community centered planning approach for creating culturally competent disaster resilience strategies that emphasize equity before and after a disaster and ensure the health and well-being of all residents, especially the vulnerable, during times of stress.
Guests participated in a tabletop exercise, heard from thought-leaders from the academic and scientific fields, conversed with panelists and engaged their small groups in a lessons-learned table discussion. The Summit provided close captioning and ASL in order to ensure the highest level of accessibility to attendees.
The conference featured:
- The “Run Your Resilientville” tabletop exercise which challenged participants to build teams at the community level of spontaneous volunteers to meet the care and shelter needs of residents with only the resources that we in the neighborhood pre-event.
- A briefing on the Haywired Initiative by Dale Cox, USGS
- A briefing on the Empowered Communities Program by Daniel Homsey, NEN and GL Hodge, Resilient Bayview (View Video Here)
- Keynote address on The Essential Role of Social Cohesion in Creating Resilient Communities by Prof. Daniel Aldrich, North Eastern University (View Video Here)
- A panel on Advancing Equity in Our Pursuit of Resilience facilitated by Felisia Thibodeaux, Resilient Bayview (View Video Here)
- A presentation on the Earthquake Country Alliance’s mission and work by Mark Benthien, ECA
Summit Videos & Report
Funders
Summit Partners
Summit Speakers
Dale A. Cox is the Project Manager and co-creator of USGS Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project. Dale led over 300 scientists and experts in 2008 to create the ShakeOut Earthquake Scenario. Dale also created the “The Great ShakeOut”, an international event occurring annually with over 40 million participants.curring annually with over 40 million people participating.
Daniel P. Aldrich is an academic in the fields of political science and Asian studies and is currently professor of political science and public policy at Northeastern University. His book, Building Resilience, explores how communities around the world respond to and recover from disaster.
Felisia Thibodeaux is the Executive Director of IT Bookman Community Center. She has been serving the public for over 25 years and coordinates Resilient Bayview (Empowering Communities Program HUB) which facilitates meeting and trainings to improve community resiliency in Bayview and Hunters Point.
Chris Iglesias is the CEO of The Unity Council, one of East Oakland’s most vital community assets, a 53-year-old Social Equity Development Corporation. Mr. Iglesias oversees The Unity Council’s intergenerational pathway programming for 8,000 individuals and families dedicated to achieving their education, career, financial and housing goals.
Luis “Vance” Taylor is Chief of the Office of Access and Functional Needs at the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. Vance is responsible for ensuring the needs of individuals with disabilities and persons with access or functional needs are identified before, during and after disasters and integrated into the State’s emergency management systems.
The Rev. Dr. Megan Rohrer is the pastor at Grace Lutheran in the Sunset District and a chaplain for the SFPD. With over 15 years experience working with the homeless and hungry in San Francisco, Megan preaches and teaches internationally about homelessness and LGBTQ issues. Megan received an honorable mention as an Unsung Hero of Compassion from Wisdom in Action with His Holiness the Dali Lama, is an award winning LGBTQ historian and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in transgender nonfiction.
Neighborhood Empowerment Network is a cross sector cohort of city-wide resident leaders, community & faith based organizations, city agencies, private sector stakeholders, academic and philanthropic institutions that align their expertise, programs, technical and financial resources to advance the development of tools, resources and methods that empower communities to strengthen their capacity to advance their resilience goals.