All of Village Earth’s Sustainable Community Development Certificate courses ultimately focus on building resilient communities. We often hear of climate change resilience, and we have a whole class that focuses on Building Climate Change Resilient Communities, but what does it mean beyond the all-encompassing threat of climate change?
Resilience can be generally defined as the capacity for a community to absorb stresses and maintain function in the face of external stresses imposed upon it and adapt, reorganize, and evolve into more desirable configurations that improve the sustainability of the system, leaving it better prepared for future impacts. Through our various courses we address ways that we as community members and outside allies/external activators can help communities become more resilient. For example, community mapping can be an important tool to both visualize external stresses and evolve their way of thinking spatially. Dispute Resolution is another important tool to mitigate conflicts and learn to adapt through conflict resolution methods. And learning about different approaches to community development gives us a theoretical understanding of how things came to be as well as practical tools we can use in our work.
To learn more, check out our Sustainable Community Development Certificate courses now enrolling through June 7.
