“Resilience Hubs are community-based locations that nourish existing relationships and trust in the community to help prepare for the impacts of climate change and other disruptions.”
For those who attended EMO's Oregon Interfaith Earth Summit 2023, you might remember a brief discussion of Resilient Communities Cohort for Congregations. Links were listed at the bottom of my Recap, but you may have missed it or are still not sure what it's all about.
Cohort teams from across the state will be meeting via Zoom on the third Tuesday of each month from 6:30–8:30 p.m. from February through June 2023. The first Zoom gathering is coming up on Tuesday, February, 21, 2023, so please let Cherice Bock know if you are interested in participating in a local group of 3-7 people. Click here to send her an email. The following is information from Cherice:
Why? Our wisdom traditions affirm the sacredness of the Earth. Yet today, our hearts ache alongside the Earth and our neighbors, as communities across the Pacific Northwest face ever more frequent and severe disasters: wildfires, floods, extreme drought, 100-year storms, and heat waves.
To what new forms of grieving, living, and being does this destabilizing reality of climate breakdown call us as people of faith and fierce love?
How might we prepare, protect, and regenerate our communities in the face of such threats?
How can our faith communities, congregations, and faith-based organizations participate in hubs and networks for resilience in our communities?
Join us as teams across our region come together to explore these questions and begin the work of building resilience alongside our broader communities.
What is the Cohort? What will we do together?
We will listen to the stories of ourselves, our ancestors, our communities, and the land.
What do these stories unveil about how we got to where we are today?
Why do others amongst us find themselves in such different circumstances?
What might these stories reveal about how we can move, together, toward greater resilience in the face of climate breakdown and disasters?
We will learn practices and postures that nurture collective resilience. The health and well-being of ourselves, our congregations, our neighbors (human and other species), our shared watersheds and waterways, and our common home, Earth, are inextricably intertwined.
We will name and work to unlearn ways of working, worshiping, and consuming that makes us all more vulnerable to disasters — and especially those ways of acting and relating to one another and the earth that result in disproportionate burdens and impacts most often to poor and working-class people, Indigenous people, racialized communities, and immigrants and refugees.
We will discern and traverse pathways to greater resilience — identifying, advocating for, and beginning to implement concrete changes to the physical-material, spiritual, and relational infrastructure of our communities in support of equitable mitigation and adaptation.
Along the way, each team will develop and start to implement a context-specific plan of action for how your particular community can become a stronger node of resilience within a growing network of resilience hubs across the region.
What is the commitment?
Come as a team. Register at least 3 (and up to 7) members of your congregation or community to participate together as a team.
Two gatherings a month.
Cohort teams from across the state will meet via Zoom on the third Tuesday of each month from 6:30–8:30 pm from February through June 2023 (2/21, 3/21, 4/18, 5/16, 6/20).
One gathering a month in-person or online with just your team.
Contribute to sustainability. A suggested contribution of $100 per person. Funds will be used to pay for honorariums for our guest speakers and to reimburse various facilitation costs.
Our Cohort Design Team will provide:
Community, Connection, & Content. The first hour of each gathering will focus on stories, as we learn about resilience and the impact of climate change from members of immigrant and Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous communities in our region. During the second hour, we’ll share practices we can use to build more positive resilience in our own communities.
Accompaniment. Each Cohort Team will be matched with a Companion who will meet with and walk alongside your team as you translate and practice what you are learning through the Cohort into your own local context.
Opportunities for Ongoing Support. Teams that complete the Cohort will have the opportunity to access a mini-grant to support a Resilience project in their own community.
Next Steps:
Register: Fill out this form. Along with simple information questions, there are four questions that require a short response (you might plan 15-20 minutes to fill this out). We know many of you are still in the process of building your team. As you confirm participants, please forward this link and have each person fill out the registration form. This will help us streamline communications and plans.
Form Your Team: As you pull together your team to engage in this work (at least three people from each community) consider who could serve as host or co-host. This point person (or people) will take responsibility for convening your team as needed, coordinating with your Companion, and communicating with the Cohort Design Team.
Questions? Please don’t hesitate to reach out to SarahL@OregonSynod.org or cbock@emoregon.org
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