Responding Locally to a Global Crisis
Two years ago a debris flow swept through my hometown of Santa Barbara and changed everything. The loss of life, property and security were hard to fathom. But the disaster and the community response made a few things clear that are true for all the communities where we work: We are all vulnerable. When crises hit, we are in it together. If we all bring what we have to offer, we have what we need to get through. And the power and potential of community in the face of adversity is remarkable.
Now the global pandemic, loss of life, and the shutdown are reshaping our society and economy. This is a global crisis, but the same fundamental truths hold here - we will get through it by coming together in community. Despite the hardships, or perhaps because of them, we can build a pathway to a far brighter and more resilient, connected and collaborative future for our communities, our country and the world.
We believe that process begins now, right in the places where we live, through shared work on what matters most. That’s the heart of what we do here at LegacyWorks Group: We bring people and organizations together in common cause around complex systems-scale problems and turn them into opportunities. We do it in a way that gets the job done, builds trust and community capacity, and prepares communities to take on even bigger challenges together.
That’s what we’re busy doing now - responding to our communities’ immediate needs by helping nonprofits, local farmers and social enterprises access relief funds and adapt their business models to address their evolving challenges and opportunities. We’re helping communities ensure that relief funding flows and gets where it needs to go. We’re helping farmers build new business models to get produce directly to people through self-organizing neighborhood hubs (which themselves build resilience)... and more. We would love to hear what you’re doing to respond and build resilience and what you would like to see happen in your community.
We believe we can emerge with more connected, resilient and equitable communities for everyone if we’re all in it together.
Amidst the swirl of information and misinformation out there, we all found these two pieces by Nate Hagen and Charles Eisenstein on the systemic implications of the pandemic very helpful and inspiring. If you haven’t read them yet, we encourage it. Both articles emphasize the need for the change to begin in our communities.
An Overview of the Systemic Implications of the Coronavirus by Nate Hagens, originally published by Resilience.org
“I fear many Americans have come to equate [the economy] with the level of the stock market – when the real health of an economy is the well-being of its people, its land and its future.”
The Coronation by Charles Eisenstein
“Here is the hope... We have so many amazing pro-social responses happening now—taking care of health care workers, donating masks, delivering food to the elderly, sharing knowledge, accelerating intellectual collaboration/peer review on the science of SARS-Cov 2. How do we keep and expand on this emergent altruism in our culture?”
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