Building Resilient Communities

This seminar course will examine resilience of communities to natural and man-made disasters, climate change and other vulnerabilities. It will do so with an objective of finding ways to create resilience in communities that are apparently ‘weak’. Many communities in the world today are vulnerable to environmental and man-made threats. In many cases there is not sufficient help from governments and organizations to create resilience in such communities. In such instances the people have to rely on their own strengths and abilities. The course will emphasize the ability of the people to develop resilience with the skills and knowledge they possess with some support from technical inputs. The key being self-sufficiency.

There will be discussions and guest lectures on the topic from various parts of the world. Through these and suggested reading material, students are expected to identify a community of their choice, anywhere, and develop a resilience strategy for the same, preferably using community skills and strengths. This will be topic of the final paper. There will be interim presentations on this with comments and suggestions from the tutor. Students are also expected to submit summaries of the discussions and presentations every two weeks.

Students are expected to develop a better understanding of how to address vulnerabilities in communities that need it and develop strategies for the same. One important point is to be able to identify the strengths and skills of the people at risk and how they can be applied independently for their own resilience.
 

The first day of GSD classes, Tuesday, September 5th, is held as a MONDAY schedule. As this course meets only on Tuesdays, the first meeting of this course will be on Tuesday, September 12th. It will meet regularly thereafter.