Building resilience in rural communities: toolkit

How can a sense of community contribute to the resilience of individuals and groups? This toolkit is designed to be used by programme coordinators such as community workers, health professionals, and others working with individuals and groups in the community, including voluntary or commercial groups and community leaders. It provides ideas and information that could be included in new or existing social programmes or workshops.

The authors explain how resilience refers to the capacity of an individual or community to cope with stress, overcome adversity or adapt positively to change. The toolkit contains eleven resilience concepts which incorporate the factors most commonly reported, in the authors' research, as enhancing community and individual resilience. Each concept section consists of two sheets. On the first page, a description of the concept is given, followed by three prompts and ideas for enhancing resilience using this concept at the individual, group, and community level.

Case studies of how the resilience concept has been applied in other programmes or communities are provided. In addition each concept section contains a synopsis of how the concept relates to community-wide interview findings from the authors' study of Stanthorpe community in Australia. Concepts addressed in this toolkit include:

• social networks and support
• early experience
• environment and lifestyle
• infrastructure and support services
• diverse and innovative economy
• beliefs