About us

Forging Resilience stands in the gap between local climate challenges and expert climate solutions. We do this work by supporting public libraries and museums as community anchors with free resources for building civic participation around local environmental challenges. Our topical toolkits aid cultural institutions in the work they already do to empower community members to take action on issues important to them. We help communities identify environmental impacts, pinpoint barriers to action, and implement solutions that have both immediate outcomes and longterm benefits.

We believe communities know themselves best and offer tools to help them identify and achieve shared visions for their future. Lifelong science learning, art, civics education, community organizing, and place-based action are the building blocks we use to help communities build a future that protects families, friends, and neighbors.

Together, we can
forge resilient communities.

A shifting landscape

The United States is experiencing rapid and unprecedented changes in regional climates. Climate change’s impacts, including hurricanes, floods, drought, heatwaves, and mega-fires, will soon affect nearly every aspect of our daily lives. Only collaborative and sweeping action—now—can temper the worst effects of climate change in the coming years.

Yet, at a time when big, collaborative action is called for, our country is in a moment of deep distrust, with each other and with government. Politics are polarized, voting power has been weakened, and rhetoric is increasingly violent and antagonistic—undermining our social fabric and functional rule of law. Making progress on anything seems nearly impossible. Forging Resilience simultaneously addresses these twin crises—of increased environmental chaos and diminished social cohesion—by creating a network of communities with improved resilience, knowledge, and civic participation skills.

Whether your community is threatened by wildfire or West Nile Virus, experiencing economic hardship or bringing in a new industry, a strong social fabric eases the economic, social, and political conversations that inevitably arise when addressing a community concern.

Policymaking and collective action become doable.

Back to basics

Our approach focuses on developing people’s knowledge, skills, and confidence to participate in decisions that affect their daily lives.

Our toolkits are built upon three pillars: climate literacy, community resilience, and civic participation.

• Climate literacy is a basic understanding of how the climate system works, how human actions influence climate, and how climate influences people and other parts of the Earth system. As a nation, we need residents who can engage in knowledgeable discourse about the policies and pathways that affect their lives.
  
• Resilient communities are those that have the ability to prepare for anticipated natural hazards, adapt to changing conditions, and withstand and recover rapidly from disruptions. They have strong social cohesion built on mutual trust and broad inclusion. This trust allows members to be vulnerable regarding their concerns and capacities and to take risks by proposing their own solutions or trusting in others’.
  
• Civic participation goes beyond voting. It can take many forms: volunteering in homeless shelters or as a mentor, participating in gardening forums or running clubs, attending worship services and town hall meetings—these are all ways to engage in the civic life. Such experiences (and many more) form the basis of our communities because they allow us to connect with others, glimpse someone else’s difficulties or joys, and find common ground.