Increase social connectedness through engagement, capacity building, public investment, and opportunities for economically vulnerable residents to improve their economic prosperity and resilience to climate change.
Best Practice of this action
Rating Guideline
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Conduct community engagement events specifically targeted to vulnerable and underserved demographic groups in the community; hold meetings in diverse and accessible locations and provide translators and interpreters, childcare, stipends, and/or meals for participants; document input regarding community-identified needs, strategies and recommendations, and take follow-up actions to resolve problems/vulnerabilities brought to the city’s attention. |
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Implement a program of targeted training, job placement, and/or supportive services specifically designed to meet identified needs of economically vulnerable residents and improve their prosperity while increasing community resilience. |
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Build local community power and leadership by engaging underserved neighborhoods and investing in grassroots development of community resilience hubs to support residents and coordinate resource distribution and services every day, during disruption, and throughout recovery after natural hazard events. |
Resources
- Generate and download a Populations at Risk report for your city based upon current socioeconomic data (note: sometimes estimated) on Young & Elderly Populations, Race & Ethnicity, Educational Attainment, Language Proficiency, Individuals in Poverty, Families in Poverty, Households Receiving Public Assistance, Labor Participation, Housing Affordability, Rental & Mobile Homes, Potentially Vulnerable Households, Potentially Vulnerable People.
- The Racial Equity Toolkit (Government Alliance on Race and Equity: 2016) provides best practices for engaging communities of color, and is being used by the League of MN Cities.
- In the Eye of the Storm: A People’s Guide to Transforming Crisis & Advancing Equity in the Disaster Continuum (NAACP, 2021) guides community leaders ‘through the process of building equity into the four phases of environmental management: prevention and mitigation, preparedness and resilience building, response and relief, and recovery and redevelopment.’
- 2-star examples of targeted training, job placement and/or supportive services include:
- low-income solar or weatherization with workforce development
- urban agriculture with workforce development
- post-incarceration reentry assistance
- culturally-appropriate mentoring and peer support programs
- The UM-Extension Model of Civic Engagement brings together experience, information and diverse perspectives in a respectful process, allowing communities to reach decisions that are more thoughtful, broadly supported and ultimately sustainable.
- See The National Civic League's Civic Index, a self-assessment tool comprising 32 questions that measure and help discussion of a community’s civic capital – the formal and informal relationships, networks and capacities that communities use to make decisions and solve problems.
- The Equitable Development Principles & Scorecard was created by Twin Cities, MN community leaders to make sure that the principles and practices of equitable development, environmental justice, and affordability are available to all communities as they plan for economic development and wealth creation that benefits everyone.
- Resilience hubs are community-serving facilities that coordinate resource distribution and services before, during and/or after natural hazard events to support the resilience of existing residents.
- Green Zones focus governmental and local business resources toward transforming neighborhoods overburdened with pollution hotspots into more environmentally and economically just neighborhoods.
Order Number
3
Action Type
Finite