BALE and Resilience University are pleased to facilitate the kickoff of a community resilience assessment on Saturday, February 23rd at Bethany Church at 1 PM. Please join us for a kickoff and assessment of Randolph's resilience. This invitation is open to everyone and anyone including the town officials.

How resilient is Randolph to withstanding serious climate events?
How many people lost power in the aftermath of the snow storm that hit late last November?
How many people had to rely on support from the town or neighbors to get through the outage?
Is there anything that can be done to mitigate the impact the next time something like that happens?

What resilience boils down to is being able to meet needs locally - and ultimately, the strength of community relationships. Humans have the same basic needs everywhere, but the actual characteristics to meet those needs are different in each community. Assessing resilience is important to help gauge where our communities are at right now and where we need to grow to become happier, healthier, and more resilient.

There is an organization here in Vermont that can help Randolph become better prepared for events like that outage. This group is the Community Resilience Organizations (CRO).

Using the Community Resilience Assessment tool CRO helps guides communities through examining local resilience across sectors and making connections between them to get a better sense for the whole picture. This comprehensive assessment helps communities identify key vulnerabilities and strengths that can be leveraged to address the vulnerabilities. It prompts discussions - community members share knowledge, learn more about local resources, and shines light on what it takes to be truly resilient. It can also help communities track progress over time as progress is made and resilience increases.

CROs has successfully helped local communities like Hartford, Waterbury, Sharon, West Norwich, and Hartland conduct assessments and assist local-volunteer based teams come together and set up teams to help improve their community's resilience.

Any community can setup a CRO so please put this important event on your calendar.

If you have more questions please contact either:

John Pimental, BALE RU john.pimental@gmail.com

Mindy Blank, Executive Director mindy@gocros.org