Discerning Community Resilience in Disadvantaged Communities in the Context of Violence and Injury Prevention

Abstract

The study of community resilience is a relatively under-explored area. Accordingly, in an attempt to further our understanding of community resilience, we present a study focused on the development of a questionnaire to assess and delineate the nature of community resilience across three low socio-economic neighbourhoods in the Western Cape. The study embraced a participatory framework that incorporated several phases. Data indicated significant associations between some of the dimensions of community resilience, namely, neighbourhood cohesion and community hope (p<O.001, Fisher-Exact); community structures and leadership and social supports (p<O.05, Fisher-Exact); the ownership of a business and physical security (p<O.001, Chi-squared); and the ownership of a business and social supports (p<O.05, Chi-squared). However, some of the community resilience measures, such as the knowledge of treatment of injuries yielded no associations with any of the other measures. Using the Chi-squared test, it was found that there were significant differences between the three communities on three of the resiliency measures: neighbourhood cohesion (p<O.001), knowledge of treatment of injuries (p<O.001), and community structures and leadership (p<O.001). The results suggested that communities may have the capacity to develop resilient responses and that these responses differ across

Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities, and Strategy for Disaster Readiness

“…As one of their ''six Cs'' of community resilience, Ganor and Ben-Lavy (2003, p. 106) included ''credo,'' ''the vision of a community, one that depicts a better future, a horizon of hope.'' This idea is similar to that of community hope (Ahmed et al 2004). proposed that an initial focus on promoting collective efficacy would increase the likelihood of achieving success in working with a community to adopt mitigation strategies.…”

“…Sense of community, characterized by high concern for community issues, respect for and service to others, sense of connection, and needs fulfillment, is assumed to be a dimension of community capacity (Goodman et al 1998, p. 261). It is also believed to be an attribute of resilient communities (Ahmed et al 2004;Landau and Saul 2004;Pfefferbaum et al 2005;Tse and Liew 2004). As noted earlier, disasters often disrupt sense of community (e.g., Abramowitz 2005;Erikson 1976;Kaniasty and Norris 2004).…”

Community Capacity Building in Social Forestry Development: A Review

“…Community capacity is a characteristic that affects the ability of communities to identify, mobilize and resolve social and public problems (Goodman et al, 1998) as well as combining various forms of capital and institutional context in relation to producing outcomes (Beckley et al, 2008). The various capitals are interconnected according to Ahmed et al (2004).The use of one of the capitals will create new capital and increase productivity in the other capitals. Capitals can be transformed from one form to another (Fey et al, 2006) by converting capital to performance or outcomes (Brown et al, 2001, Beckley et al, 2008Simmons et al, 2011;Bennett et al, 2012).…”

Barriers to caregiver involvement in a child safety intervention in South Africa

“…Communities tend to have the potential to develop resiliency; however, the nature of these responses may differ from one community to another (Ahmed et al, 2004). The manifestation of networks and notable relationships (Emmet, 2003) are indicative of resiliency in communities plagued with adversity and violence (Henández, 2002).…”