• Community Preparedness:
Once your family plan is in motion, the larger issues of community need to be addressed. Whether you live in the suburbs in a single-family dwelling, a mobile home in a trailer park or in a co-housing arrangement in an intentional community, a neighbourhood network can be an excellent support system. Joining a group of people together by a shared vision has numerous advantages.
• Some Advantages of Interdependence:
- Enlarged thought-pool
- Infrastructure for delivery of goods and services
- Bulk buying power
- Skills exchange
- Division of labour
- Protection from bandits
- Sense of contribution
- Social activities
But to insure the benefits of community and yet minimize the hazards of large groups of hungry, anxious people, you’ll have to inspire self-reliance, kinship and co-operation at the community level. People around the world have organized crisis survival workgroups for exactly that.
Again, the particulars of your lifestyle will dictate the most appropriate action steps. First though, you need to reduce the larger community into a smaller, more manageable scale. The procedures for organizing camaraderie, self-sufficiency and back-up contingencies within an apartment building, a suburb or a town are essentially the same. In fact, many of the issues are identical to preparing a family. The major difference between a family plan and a community plan is the scale. Proportionately, the complexities are larger, but so are the potential benefits.
Suggested Crisis Survival Workgroup Agenda:
- Gather relevant information
- Schedule a community meeting
- Circulate self-reliance information
- List skills of each member
- Build confidence and morale
- Determine the most critical issues
- Develop a plan
- Create a barter exchange program
- Act together in sub-groups
- Develop community cohesiveness
The size, emotional closeness, inherent weakness, group dynamics and philosophical climate of a community all factor into the effectiveness of the plan. But capable leadership is essential. If you’re one of the champions who present themselves, remember that you may have to fight the battle more than once. People want to restore their faith in the future, but most people are stuck in a negative web. To encourage people to take decisive action will require compassion, conviction, and initiative. Consult survival workgroup resources for guidelines.
Organize or join a preparedness gathering at your local community centre or library. Exchange ideas with participants and work through the beginnings of crisis survival in work groups. Chances are you’ll find a few new friends and many good chunks of information you can use to further everyone’s growth toward self-relaince, community-conscience and global cohesiveness.
Helping to prepare the people in your immediate community is not only the right thing to do, it will increase your ability to survive crisis.