Resilience is one of those words that we collectively hear but don’t necessarily collectively understand. It is part of a greater package of terms like good, just, free, democratic, and so on. Our last CCMW Youth Project focused on individual and community resilience and after two years, we built an on-the-ground definition of resilience that is relevant to those doing grassroots work. Individual and community resilience is encompassed within what we call Human Resilience.
It is a yearning to see a community become resilient to the potential trauma of change. It is the ability not only to cope with the crisis of sudden change but also to grow and to prosper.
Two years later, the concept of human resilience became important in our understanding of civic engagement. In September 2016, we began our next CCMW Youth Project by building on particular insights from past projects. The goal of Civics Works is to bring youth from resilience to engagement.
Engagement is working to make a difference in the life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values, and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community through both political and non-political processes (not through governmental or commercial processes).
Looking at these two definitions of resilience and engagement, we can see a transition from crisis, to growth, to action. Making a difference in the life of our communities is a courageous vocation that acknowledges past failures, struggles and pains, to help inform civic institutions, organizations and policy.
No experience is wasted.
The purpose of tapping into the richness of this process isn’t to use young people as “volunteer resources.” Rather it is to create a space for learning from one another where tools can be conceived, developed and implemented to disrupt the status quo, build ongoing engagement with civic institutions, jumpstart a career of community organizing, civic engagement and social entrepreneurship, and witness social change.
But what makes this richness so rich, isn’t the tools and skills that can help one become a leader and get employed but it is a tapping into a fundamental truth. As one of our Co-Lab Facilitators Mark Gonzales tweeted:
Shape your visions for start-ups and social transformation on the fundamental truth that there is no greater value than life and love.
