Resiliency Organizing Hubs provide interactive, culturally relevant training in resilience-based organizing. They provide a space for respite and rejuvenation and can serve as a platform to galvanize a just transition.
The concept of Resiliency Organizing Hubs was first introduced at the NC Climate Justice Summit in November, 2014. Simply talking about the concept and offering toolkits was insufficient to get Hubs up and running; grassroots groups were too short on resources and too focused on existing activities to add another commitment. However, in the wake of Hurricane Florence, numerous groups turned to NCCJC as an anchoring organization in the Just Florence Recovery process to request the kind of support Hubs could offer. Starting in 2018, the Collective has been working with several communities to build local climate resilience. The team working to launch and support Hubs is made up of many members of the NCCJC Leadership Team as well as Ajamu Dillahunt from Black Workers for Justice.
How Resiliency Organizing Hubs Work:
- Building power, capacity and connections across constituencies: Because Hubs are founded on the principles of climate justice, they cultivate intergenerational and multiracial leadership while centering indigenous peoples, communities of color, youth, low income communities, women, LGBTQI+ people and immigrants.
- Relational coalition building through the 4 Rs: A truly Just Transition requires social transformation. We must RESIST inequality and oppression, REFORM institutions, REIMAGINE a compelling vision for our world and RECREATE the models to build that world. Resiliency Organizing Hubs are places we can practice these 4 R’s. The Hubs offer a place and a process for many groups working toward a Just Transition (and through a Just Recovery) to learn more about each other’s campaigns, engage in political education and to collaborate on joint efforts. People in the Hubs can gain a greater understanding of the organizations and groups in their community that are doing work in each of the 4Rs to learn more about what’s happening and where there are gaps. There can also be activities that explicitly develop one of the 4Rs (for example, collective visioning for a Just Transition would be an important piece of Re-imagining)
- Healing/cultural space: the Hubs are based on the principles of transformative organizing and include practices that build racial justice, economic justice and environmental justice. Healing justice circles, racial equity workshops and skills building in trauma stewardship are examples of possible offerings. Hubs are a place where people give and receive many kinds of support and can “bring their whole selves”.
Community Disaster Preparation Canvasses
Our Energy Democracy Leadership Institute interns and fellows supporting Resiliency Organizing Hubs by leading canvasses in their communities to help people prepare and respond to climate disasters.
Photo Description
[L] EDLI Fellow Kennedy and Summer Intern Mikayah surveying a neighbor at the door for their Community Disaster Preparation Survey in Robeson County. [R] EDLI interns Barrett, Lucas, Mikayah and Ethan preparing to canvass.
What Resiliency Organizing Hubs Do:
1) Community-based Emergency Preparedness – Hubs carry forward the ongoing work of learning about the strengths and vulnerabilities specific communities have to the impacts of climate change and organize to address those impacts. Hubs offer an educational space for sharing specific resilience/climate adaptation skills and community-based emergency preparedness and response trainings.
2) Participatory Action Research and Climate Resilience Planning – Hubs enable us to learn about the strengths and vulnerabilities our communities have in the face of climate change and the impacts of the fossil fuel economy. Members of Hubs investigate and document progress and gaps in terms of a Just Transition and Just Recovery in their region. Some Hub members may form a Climate Equity Council to review the region’s sustainability, climate change and economic development plans to assess how the plans could be improved by incorporating climate equity principles, practices and benchmarks.
3) Skills training to build the local, regenerative economy – Hubs offer training on cooperative economics and green job opportunities such as ecological restoration, green building and community solar.
4) Skills training in organizing and advocacy — Hubs support impacted communities to build power locally and regionally to win the solutions that will address the roots causes of climate change.