There is a significant difference between resilience and resistance. Resilience can be defined as a community’s ability to return to its former state after a disturbance. Resilience based approach to community development is founded on the belief that all citizens have the capability to rise above adversity and to thrive in spite of the adversity. Resilience theory is a strengths based model, which means attention is on giving the opportunities and supports that encourage life success, instead of attempting to get rid of the issues that promote failure.
Sometimes resilience is confused with the idea of resistance. Resistance is an effort to stop or prevent disruptive events from occurring. Some strategies applied in resistance include physical countermeasures like creating firewalls to shield computer systems from attack. On the other hand, resilience presupposes that resistance might not always be an option and therefore incorporate the provision of or access to optional services and resources if the resistance approach fails.
Resilience is not antithetical to resistance. Resilience encompasses resistance because if a society can resist an interruption, its resources are sufficient to prevent the interruption from reducing society functioning with no need for adaption. However, an approach that just directs resources towards resisting threats will almost surely be expensive, and maybe conflict with individual and societal liberties. Resilience is also much better because when resistance strategies do not succeed, they have a propensity to fail catastrophically. Resilience theory is based on a community’s adaptive ability. Resilience entails a community’s ability to remember and store experiences, and apply that experience and memory to reorganize resources, learn and innovate in order to get accustomed to shifting environmental demands. Resilience also involves a community’s ability to connect with others outside and inside the community, to communicate lessons and experiences learned, and to self organize in the lack of direction. Therefore, innovative learning, connectedness, and communal learning establish the foundation of resilience on a societal level. Resilience theory tackles the strengths that systems and people demonstrate that make it possible for them to conquer adversity. The Department of Home Land Security (DHS) coordinates wide-ranging federal efforts to protect against, prepare for, recover from, respond to and mitigate natural disaster, terrorist attacks or any other major emergency, while working with communities, individuals, the nonprofit and private sectors, local, state, territorial and tribal partners and faith based organizations to make sure of effective and swift recovery efforts . The DHS’s to build a resilient and ready nation include promoting “whole community” approach to disaster management nationally, building the country’s capability to recover and stabilize from disastrous events, building unity of effort, common strategic understanding, and reinforcing information sharing among disaster management teams. The DHS also provides training and build plans to promote preparedness for disaster with in the U.S. The DHS released the, “National Preparedness Goal, called for in Presidential Policy Directive 8: National Preparedness PPD-8” that stresses the whole community approach as a basis for attaining a more resilient and secure country. This policy is bound to succeed because it identifies the essential capabilities needed to protect against, prevent, respond to, mitigate, and recover from the hazards and threats that pose the biggest risk to the country. In addition, this policy is beneficial because it serves as a guide on sustaining, building, and delivering the key capabilities needed for overcoming disasters once they occur.
The DHS realizes and emphasizes to the public that active participation by each segment of society in sustaining, building, and delivering essential capabilities is an important component of national disaster preparedness. The DHS’s National Security Strategy takes into account individual preparedness and therefore engages with community members as a method of enhancing the resiliency of the U.S. While traditional efforts have been aimed at preparedness of first responders and government, individual preparedness to assist and care for their neighbors it times of disaster is very important when it comes to the resilience of a society. This is because neighbor-to-neighbor and individual-to-individual assistance, when done correctly, reduces the responsibility on first responders and therefore makes recovery efforts much faster, participatory and united. The DHS’s policy on resilience ensures that families, individuals, businesses, first responders, communities, and emergency management exercise, plan, train, increase capacity and capability, and implement readiness strategies for disasters. Since the DHS appreciates that it is impossible to eradicate all risks, a resilient country must have a strong capability to take action when disasters occur. Such response should be efficient, effective, and based on the fundamental elements of disaster management. When a disaster happens that is outside local response capabilities, resilient societies should be able to get help from neighboring regional and jurisdictional partners. This requires a “whole community” approach to disaster management. The DHS is bound to be successful because its policy integrates the private sector, community organizations (plus individuals), and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) into activities that sustain, build and deliver the important response capabilities needed to deal with disasters. Additionally, the DHS has taken into account that when disasters happen that are beyond local response capacities, communities should be able to come together and preserver until times get better or help arrives.
After 911, the DHS stepped up its efforts to ensure that communities and individuals around the U.S. were prepared for any disaster if it occurred. A few year later, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and though a lot of has been debated about the American Government’s immediate response to the disaster, the people of New Orleans came together to overcome the odds. They showed great resilience even when their city was ravaged by disaster and it appeared that all was lost. In reality, too many volunteers turned up to help the people of New Orleans that some of them had to be turned away. This shows the resilient spirit in the American people. The American people pulled each other up and were driven to help each other. After Hurricane Katrina, a very different type of resilience emerged in the people of New Orleans. Any disaster puts the authority and legitimacy of government on trial because it exposes the inadequacies of political leadership and government organs. The U.S. government is blamed by some for not foreseeing the damage that would be caused by Hurricane Katrina because of the sophisticated technology they have. Even after the disaster, some say the government’s response was too slow and as a result, some lives were lost.
Within days of Hurricane Katrina, people started recovery efforts and to reclaim the city and organize themselves by taking reconstruction with little assistance from government authorities. There efforts guaranteed that certain
Their efforts ensured that certain activities were recovered or restored, ranging from housing to medical services" (p. 270). Grassroots mobilization led to lasting political reforms, new political leadership, and a commit ment to building affordable housing. There have been inspiring stories of citizen resilience in New Orleans. Residents of the devastated Lower Ninth Ward, where home ownership among the mostly African American population is close to 6o%, have been fighting for a chance to rebuild. The working-class Vietnamese American community of east New Orleans known as Ver sailles was also hard hit by Katrina and thoroughly flooded; homes and businesses were destroyed, as were the extensive market gardens surrounding the community. But the social fabric held, secured by a common heritage. This enabled an extraordinary degree of communal resilience. As the
New York Times reported, the Vietnamese
formed neighborhood groups to rebuild, using the [local] church as headquarters. One team repairs and decontaminates the houses. Others arrange tetanus shots to prevent illness, and acupuncture sessions to ease stress. Another team buys food to make spicy stews and rice for the families who visit for the day to check on property. Friends and family members drive
