| |
Ethos Perspectives
Social Resilience
United Kingdom
Reference 4: "Improving
Opportunity, Strengthening Society: The Government’s
strategy to increase race equality and community cohesion"
In January 2005, the UK government
launched a cross-government strategy to increase race equality
and strengthen the sense of belonging and inclusiveness amongst
different ethnicities. Key target areas included:
| • |
Education: the setup of a £162 million Ethnic
Minority Achievement Grant to increase pupil attainment
in schools, and improve the teaching of English to pupils
for whom English is a second language; |
| • |
Labour: the government has established targets across
the Public Service to increase recruitment of ethnic minorities,
especially in teaching, policing, and healthcare sectors
so that the services are more representative of the communities
they serve. The government is also reviewing procurement
policies to incentivise private sector suppliers to promote
diversity and race equality in recruitment; |
| • |
Health: "health inequalities" experienced
by the ethnic minority (e.g. higher incidences of heart
disease amongst South Asians) will be tackled with more
resources and "tailored services"; |
| • |
Housing: to tackle the issue of overcrowding and poor
quality accommodation prevalent amongst ethnic minorities,
caused by factors beyond economic deprivation. |
Besides initiating "hard" targets
and policy reviews, the UK government has also launched "softer"
initiatives such as sports campaigns ("Let’s Kick
Racism Out of Football"), citizenship education in schools,
increasing volunteering opportunities for the ethnic minority,
and engaging museums to promote and celebrate the diversity
of the various communities. Youths and new immigrants are
key audiences for these initiatives. Engagement of the Muslim
community has also become key since the July London bombings.
Home Office. Improving Opportunity,
Strengthening Society: The Government’s strategy to
increase race equality and community cohesion. United Kingdom:
Home Office, 2005. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/
(accessed 6 March 2007)
United States
Reference 5: "Assessing
Community Resilience" by B. Pfefferbaum and F. Norris
In the immediate aftermath of
9/11, "resilience" has generally been used by
the US Government in association with safeguarding and recovery
of critical infrastructure and crisis preparedness. Recently,
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began to examine
resilience in the context of the public's "ability to
take deliberate, meaningful, collective action" in crises.
To enable communities to identify existing
gaps in strengthening resilience, Pfefferbaum and Norris have
established a 46-question survey, measuring each factor along
properties of resilient social systems:
| • |
Robustness: ability to withstand stress without degradation
of function; |
| • |
Redundancy: substitutability of systems and resources
to functional requirements; |
| • |
Resourcefulness: ability to formulate priorities and
apply resources to achieve goals; |
| • |
Rapidity: ability to address priorities and accomplish
goals in a timely manner so as to contain losses and prevent
future disruption. |
The qualitative nature of the study (survey
followed by focus group interviews) does not allow for cross-comparison
but is used for "community self-study and enhancement".
At the local government and community levels, it provides
a rigorous identification of gaps in resilience-building.
Pfefferbaum B., and Norris, F. Assessing
Community Resilience. USA: National Consortium for the Study
of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism, 2006. Presented
at the Marriott Inn and Conference Center/ University of Maryland,
College Park, June 2006. http://www.start.umd.edu/
(accessed 25 April 2007)
I
I I
|
|
