MMI, Schumacher Institute and Dr Igor Linkov appointed to work with us

Post by Aine Ni Bhreasail

We are delighted to announce that we have appointed three grantees to work with us on our ‘Tools and approaches’ project, contributing to our ‘Ways to make resilience tangible, practical and relevant’ workstream. We had a lot of very high quality, interesting responses to our call for expression of interest and had a tough time choosing partners.

We wanted to explain a bit more of our decision-making process so everyone could see how we got to where we are.

From the 35 responses we received we shortlisted 8, based on the following criteria:

• Depth of their domain knowledge
• Breadth of knowledge in terms of number of sectors covered
• Their geographic and social reach – how many geographic locations do they cover and had they worked with the informal sector?
• Experience of framework assessment
• Convening power
• Evidence of their influence
• Evidence of their collaboration

The assessors for this were from the Resilience Shift team, and an external assessment was made by our Technical Advisory Group.

We interviewed our shortlist over the phone regarding their interest and capability to work in this area. All of the interviewees were outstanding and we felt they brought different strengths to the table.

Our selected grantees are:

• MMI Engineering who bring expertise on the Value Chain concept and experience of using different tools and approaches to assess resilience across the world;
• The Schumacher Institute who will advise on human-centred design, implementation science and will facilitate workshops; and
• Dr Igor Linkov, risk and decision scientist at the US Army Corps of Engineers, Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon and consultant at Factor Social, who will provide technical expertise.

We also plan to use our shortlist to appoint conveners for workshops in this project. We would like to reiterate our thanks to everyone who has taken the time to apply to our EOI. We will actively look for ways to engage with those applicants that we felt could contribute to our work going forward.

Please get in touch if you have any questions relating to this project.

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Developing a Community

Post by Miriam Kennedy

 

At the Resilience Shift, we believe that our success will be as much about how we do things as about what we do. We aim to learn by doing in collaboration with others, share knowledge and foster a global community. In a recent community building workshop, we concluded that our community starts with you, and our network of collaborators and partners.

It’s clear that a strong community can:

• Provide a sense of belonging
• Encompass shared values or motivations
• Include opportunities to influence
• Integrate the individual and social aims of members

Our first community-building session in May involved our core team. In a miracle of technology, the session spanned three continents, including a late-night dial-in from Melbourne and a video entry from San Francisco – time zone challenges are inevitable when delivering a global programme.

We kicked off the session with a round of introductions, to people and projects, as a first step in encouraging learning and knowledge sharing across sectors.

What does a community look like?

We outsourced some of the hard work to our wider team to get them thinking about what a community is, by asking them three things:

1. Name 2 communities you are already part of.

2. How do you engage with these communities?

3. What do you get from it?

A selection of answers

Communities	How do you engage with them?	What do you get from it?
Clean air and landscape research hub Melbourne victory FC New London Architecture Next Gen group Equilibri Art community Friends & family Sailing group Engineers Ireland Royal Society of Arts Book club	Emails Newsletters Meetings As a trustee Social media As a mentor Providing advice As a committee member Informal chats Work events	Learning about topics of interest Building networks Greater impact New knowledge Friendship Understanding multidisciplinary issues Professional accreditation Early sight of potential opportunities Feeling of connection Different perspectives Dose of creativity

The answers showed huge variety and built into our open discussion afterwards of what people valued from being part of a community. We have taken on board all the excellent points made and they are informing our programme’s knowledge and community strategy.

We want to make sure we add value for all of our collaborators and partners by providing you with what you need from us.It’s important to us that our work is steered by your input as we build our programme and grow our network.

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