Reaching the unreached: Building resilience through engagement with diverse communities
Abstract
The Department of Homeland Security Center for Faith-based & Neighborhood Partnerships (DHS Center) is one of 13 federal centres whose mandate is to engage faith-based and community groups with governments in the delivery of human services. Working alongside local jurisdictions, over the past five years, the DHS Center developed the Building Resilience with Diverse Communities (BRDC) engagement process to improve relationships with faith-based and community organisations and to ‘reach unreached’ populations in emergency preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation. BRDC works to improve community resilience by engaging the ‘whole community’ through its seven-stage process. The BRDC process has been successfully implemented in Los Angeles, California, Lakewood, New Jersey and in varying degrees in other communities. The initiative demonstrates that emergency management can adapt the BRDC process to effectively integrate faith-based and community groups into their plans and processes, leverage existing resources and, by doing so, increase resilience with some of the hardest to reach and unreached populations in their jurisdictions.
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Author's Biography
Jannah Scott is Deputy Director of the DHS Center for Faith-based & Neighborhood Partnerships. A presidential appointee, she joined the Obama administration in 2009. She has been the driver of both research and practice behind the Building Resilience with Diverse Communities process since its inception in 2010, serving as the Center’s embedded representative in nine jurisdictions across the country. Jannah has over 30 years of experience working with national, state and local governments, including the last 17 years working to engage faith-based and community groups with governments for the greater good.
Marcus Coleman is a stakeholder engagement professional with more than eight years’ experience building coalitions to create more resilient communities. This includes expertise in cultivating, sustaining and leveraging results partnerships at the national and local level between government and non-governmental groups, including the private sector, and non-profit, philanthropic, faith-based and civic society organisations. Marcus currently leads the DHS Center’s national stakeholder engagement strategy.
Citation
Scott, Jannah and Coleman, Marcus (2016, June 1). Reaching the unreached: Building resilience through engagement with diverse communities. In the Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning, Volume 9, Issue 4. https://doi.org/10.69554/OWYD5577.
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