Community-led Resilience Hubs

Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) is an environmental justice organization working to build people power in low-income communities of color to achieve healthy air, soil, water, and resilient communities. Climate change and environmental racism disproportionately impact low-income communities of color impacting global climate justice concerns. We believe that people power and community organizing will lead to the solutions needed to address climate change at the root cause, to build a just transition, and to build climate solutions that prioritize those most impacted.

Community-led solutions prioritize the needs of low-income, Black, Indigenous, and communities of color; by recognizing that lived-experiences and community care- in the form of mutual aid and improving social cohesion- are vital to address climate destruction. Using the Just Transition framework as a guide, we ensure that solutions are not replicating the existing pollution-based extractive economy. Rather they pivot us towards a society that addresses community needs, heals the planet, empowers the people and improves our quality of life.

The Climate Adaptation and Resilience Enhancement (CARE) program works to build climate resilience and increase adaptive capacity via emergency preparedness, community care, resilient homes and local resilience hubs.

What is a Resilience Hub? 

A resilience hub is a trusted community space that offers year-round support, services, and resources especially during climate- related events. This site will differ based on the needs of the local community and site visitors. CBE members have identified air conditioning, air filtration, energy resilience, refrigeration for medicine and food, first-aid materials, water and food, as a few of the most important resources and services a resilience hub should offer. 

Resilience Hubs offer energy resilience and access despite power outages.  Solar panels  convert sunlight into electrical energy. When coupled with battery storage, the energy can be stored into batteries for later use. Resilience hubs equipped with solar panels and battery storage allow the site to remain open and continue their services for public access even during a power outage or emergency event.

In 2013 when the CARE program began, the objectives were rooted in community visioning to build a foundation of community leadership. Consistent community visioning with members allows the opportunity to spread awareness of potential climate impacts and cultivate creative problem solving rooted in traditional and holistic practices that build long-term change. We have conducted these workshops via community mapping, freestyle drawing, learning from other communities through storytelling, analyzing and tracking local and statewide policy.

An example of community mapping in 2021 occurred during a mutual aid event at Phineas Banning Park in Wilmington. We facilitated a visioning table, with a large-printed map of Wilmington where park visitors mapped out existing resources and resources they wanted to expand such as green spaces, clinics, shade, community fridges, food drives, and much more.  By plotting important locations and resources we were able to determine potential locations for future resilience hubs.   

We have held various listening circles in Wilmington and in collaboration with the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office (CEMO) to listen and learn directly from community members. In 2018, we held a Heat Listening Circle where youth led conversations about heat concerns and impacts in a world café style. In 2022, we supported the design and facilitation of the Climate Emergency Los Angeles Sessions led by the CEMO office to discuss heat impacts, existing heat programs and resources, and potential investments for communities.

Through an interactive curriculum, we formed the “Resilience Squad”, a group of community leaders that ranged between 5-10 youth and adult members. They supported in building resilience kits, survey creation/distribution, designing and hosting mutual aid events. The group was compensated via stipends and emergency preparedness items. Our most popular item was the solar/hand-crank radio that served as a flashlight, radio, and battery pack.  

We used the Climate and Emergency Resilience Toolkit as a way to train and prepare “Resilience Squad” leaders. This set of graphics helped us spread awareness of potential cumulative health impacts resulting from climate and industry. These scenarios included extreme heat, wildfires, tsunamis, flaring, power outages, drought, sea level rise, earthquakes, vector borne diseases and flooding. The toolkits were shared with community members statewide which helped make across community connections through critical information and fun activities, such as our Soyviche recipe on the right!

Resilience Kits have been a staple in CARE programming. These kits provide community members with beginner materials to create an emergency backpack, aid during an extreme heat event, and are a great outreach tool. We distribute resilience kits at community events and during surveying.

The Resilience Squad led the design, creation, and outreach of our Resilience Hub Survey. The purpose of the survey is to locate existing risks, determine what resources community members need, and identify potential resilience hubs.

We collected surveys through in-person community events, near schools and parks. We also held text banking sessions where we reached over 1,000 Wilmington residents. In total we collected approximately 150 surveys.

Lessons learned: 

• Moving forward we would like to condense the survey. Since the surveys were done in public, often the respondent was curious about our organization, our work, and asked clarifying questions which increased the length of the survey, sometimes to twenty minutes!   

Mutual Aid is the free distribution of materials to low-income and unhoused communities with an emphasis in building community political power in those communities so that those who engage in mutual aid can meet the exact needs of the residents through direct aid. 

We held numerous community events at Resilience Hubs in Wilmington, alongside mutual aid organizations including the South Bay Abolitionist Collective, Community Loving, Harbor City Food Pantry, and many more. Our events were meant to gather community, we did so by distributing warm meals, fresh produce boxes, free COVID-test kits, clothing, baby supplies, resilience kits, first-aid backpacks, and other emergency preparedness materials. We partnered with the American Red Cross at one of our events that prioritized emergency preparedness, where they held various trainings throughout the day.

Lessons learned: 

• Moving forward we would like to build stronger connections with local mutual aid organizations as there is a lot of potential for intersectional organizing.  

The Tzu Chi Clinic is a respected community resource that offers acupuncture, well-being courses, and food bank services. They began their solar installation in December 2023 and will install their battery in the near future. 

At a community event held by the Clinic, we used the resilience hub survey to determine the critical electric load.  The  critical electric load  is a function to ensure that the battery is powering all essential appliances deemed necessary for the site to operate during an outage. The battery will power the downstairs lights, multiple outlets for cell phones, a refrigerator, and internet. Additionally, the Tzu Chi Clinic has hosted Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) trainings. We look forward to working with the Tzu Chi Clinic staff to increase their capacity as a resilience hub and spread awareness to the community about the resources that the Clinic offers. 

The Wilmington Senior Center is a trusted community space, especially for the elderly. The Center provides food distribution to those with limited mobility, daily programming, and a pick-up/drop-off route to increase access to community events for elderly or those living with disabilities. In 2022 they completed the installation of solar panels and a battery that will power the center during a power outage.

“In collaboration with other organizations, we were able to give out free clothing, food, produce, water, resilience kits, and COVID-test kits. We wanted to highlight the opportunity that resilience hubs have in leading mutual aid since many already provide material resources to members of the community in which they serve. Community members were eager to learn about each organization, many of them arrived before the event began! We served over 60 families, several volunteers, and I also walked the entire park distributing meals to families and unhoused residents who were unaware of the event. This remains to be one of my favorite and proudest moments of being a CARE Intern with CBE, it was a true display of what grassroots organizing can do for the betterment of their community.”

The LEAP coalition, which CBE is a member of, helped create the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office (CEMO) in the City of Los Angeles. Since its creation we have held the “Climate Equity in Los Angeles Series”, a set of community-centered workshops. Throughout the series, we discussed key environmental justice issues faced by residents throughout the City of Los Angeles- including extreme heat, equitable building decarbonization, and finding climate-resilient solutions.

 The Resilience Hub Mapping Tool is the outcome of a two-year collaboration between Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE Healthy Energy), and CBE to prioritize communities most vulnerable to climate impacts, incorporate the consideration of socio-economic factors impeding resilience, identify sites with the potential to serve as resilience hubs, and provide a starting ground for community-based organizations to plan and design resilience hubs with local community members. The mapping tool allows you to view potential resilience hub sites and summarizes each locations potential solar capacity, battery storage, and estimated costs of solar and storage. ( Click here to open the mapping tool in a new tab )

The CRWG includes ten environmental justice and social equity organizations working collectively to center and advance the vision and expertise of communities disproportionately impacted by climate change and drive climate adaptation and resilience policies, planning, and investments across state agencies and institutions to ensure that they effectively reach and address the needs of the most climate-vulnerable communities.

Feel free to review, share, and download our tools and materials for your own use!