On Resilience

Hi everyone, it’s Dawn, the Trust Manager.

Like you, here at the development trust, we are watching the crisis unfold.

For the past 6 weeks, again like you, we have had to adapt, and super quick.

What was okay to do at breakfast time, had, very often, changed by lunchtime.

Someone once said, ‘a plan is just a plan without action’, I can’t remember who, but right now, for many charities, social enterprises and businesses that plan is just a plan.

The action simply cannot happen when the plan is built on a foundation of quicksand or go against government guidelines a day later, when the rules change, or when you do not have control of what you can and cannot do.

For the past few weeks, we have heard about Respond, Recovery and Resilience.

Community Resilience is not new, but for what we are facing right now, the context is.

We have – Gorebridge community, Midlothian community, Scotland community, UK community, World community – never been here before in our lifetime.

No organisation was ready for what we are living through.

Community Resilience is knowing our vulnerabilities and knowing our capabilities and assets.

Community Resilience is preventing and mitigating the stress of the emergency and using all the knowledge and strengths we have to recover.

Gorebridge didn’t have a prepare plan for COVID-19, of course it didn’t.

Gorebridge Resilience was set up quickly, people coming together to prepare and respond at the same time. Usually they are two separate tasks. Completed at a slower pace.

Very quickly, we, Gorebridge, found ways to identify and respond to vulnerable people and offer the support they might need, while working in partnerships across such a wide range of agencies, organisations, groups and charities to ensure that the right resources and readiness was there when someone asked.

What have we (the Trust) learned? So far? Phew!

Well, Gorebridge, we (you and us) can respond to an emergency. Of that, be in no doubt.

There are so many assets in Gorebridge, it is not buildings or capital, it is our people and our willingness and genuine human compassion to respond.

The Trust (staff and board) are also looking at our own activities.

Projects. New projects on hold. New projects that are more possible now than ever before. And we look at the Beacon, just opened a year and already we are (staff, trustees, funders) talking recovery, scenario planning, what if’s, maybe’s and don’t knows.

Never even had time for its 1^st birthday party! We don’t know. We do know that right now it is delivering exactly what it was built for.

We know – like every other charity and business – we are going to have to pivot. Think differently. Respond. Identify need. Use the space for ensuring that those needs are met.

We are going to have to look at ways of caring for the asset that the community wanted and making sure when we get through the other side of this that there is something to come back to that is stronger than before.

What does that look like?

The plan you mean? We don’t know yet, we are talking daily about possibilities. We will ask you to come with us.

All we know is we are looking at 12 – 18 months down the line we are all on just now, with no light at the end of the tunnel, and whatever we do will have to help the Gorebridge community recover. That we will have to respond.

Let me know your thoughts, leave a note in the comments:

• What is community resilience to you? Do you have a meaning?
• What do you think recovery looks like for Gorebridge?

Oh, and if you would like to be part of the Trust, you feel you have assets to offer, please get in touch. Perhaps you would like to be a board member or a volunteer? Drop a line to dawn@gorebridge.org.uk and let me know.

Love, Dawn x