Why inclusion sits at the centre of resilience
Launch library · evergreen read
Inclusion is not simply a value added to resilience programs after the fact, it sits at the centre of what makes resilience actually work in practice across an entire community. A community that leaves some residents genuinely disconnected cannot draw on their full capacity when it matters most, and that capacity is often sorely missed.
Excluded groups often face compounded vulnerability, lacking both the support networks and the trust in local institutions that resilience typically depends on for its effectiveness. This means their exclusion weakens the resilience of the wider community as well as their own, in ways that are not always immediately obvious to everyone else.
Programs that genuinely prioritise inclusion, ensuring every part of a community has real access to support and participation, tend to build a stronger, more evenly distributed resilience overall. This is considerably preferable to resilience concentrated narrowly around a single group or a single, well resourced issue at the expense of others.