ABOUT RESILIENT COMMUNITIES CENTER
Resilient Communities Center is an Atlanta-based organization that integrates spiritual formation with strengths-based learning to support human flourishing. We do that through three kinds of work: mentoring individuals and teams, training practitioners, and partnering with organizations to adapt their existing programs.
We are a member of Discipling for Development, a ministry of The Navigators, and we are based in metro Atlanta, with our office in Avondale Estates and mentoring groups in Clarkston. We work with ministry workers, nonprofit and social impact staff, cross-cultural workers, and community leaders, both online and in person.
Our team works with circles of relationships experiencing fragmentation, particularly networks of people on the margins economically, socially, and spiritually, and the organizations serving them. We take a relational approach to resilience building, because poverty takes many forms. Economic impoverishment is one. Isolation is another.
RESILIENT COMMUNITIES CENTER AT A GLANCE
What we are: An organization providing coaching, training, and partnership in resilience building for ministry and nonprofit teams
Affiliation
A member of Discipling for Development, a ministry of The Navigators
Who we serve
Ministry workers, nonprofit and social impact staff, cross-cultural and intercultural workers, program designers, and team leaders
Founded
2013
What we offer
Embodiment coaching, learning communities, community-led workshops, adult learning and Bible telling trainings, residencies, and summer internships
Office
Utilizes coworking space within Switchyards at
2850 Franklin St Ste A,
Avondale Estates, GA 30002
Faith basis
We are an organization guided by the teachings of Jesus; spiritual formation is embedded in every offering
Where we work
Avondale Estates, Atlanta, Clarkston, Decatur, and Stone Mountain in Georgia
Contact
OUR VALUES
Our values within mentoring, training, and partnering.
Ongoing Formation
We believe that ongoing formation is an invitation not only for communities but organizations and practitioners at every level and at every phase of program rollouts.
Local Solutions
We believe that local solutions do not begin at research or implementation but are at the heart of reclaiming agency and harmonious systems for change.
Inner Resiliency
Inner resiliency is the internal sense of meaning and purpose that keeps a person steady when circumstances are not. We believe that inner resiliency is rooted in connection to a story of meaning and purpose in Jesus that transcends one context while remaining relevant and accessible for the present moment.
Embodied Living
We believe in the power of integrity, acknowledging strengths and weaknesses in human flourishing while embodying a path toward wholeness that is made possible as we honor the parts of ourselves and the components of our communities.
OUR TEAM
Resilient Communities Center is led by a team of staff and affiliate partnerships with licensed professionals of Steady Hope Counseling. Between them, they hold credentials in change management, community development, mental health and organizational communication, and they have worked in city-centers in the United States, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Ethiopia and the Philippines.
Our facilitators and support staff share a commitment to mutuality and curiosity in every exchange of learning. We aim for staff, programs, and partnerships that affirm leadership and stewardship in every relationship, and that make room for the child-like "why" at all levels of engagement.
OUR AFFILIATION
Resilient Communities Center is a member of Discipling for Development, a ministry of The Navigators. Since 1983, Discipling for Development has facilitated transforming spaces among communities in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and North America.
This affiliation provides members a shared library of curriculum crafted from contexts throughout the Majority World along with shared staff to support the diversity of experiences with a polycentric approach to program design.
It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.”
Ephesians 1:11-12
-- MSG
Relational strategy means we start by repairing relationships rather than by delivering goods or services.
Our Relational Strategy
At every level of engagement, from learning to launching, our priority is repairing and enriching the relationships already present in a community. Caring for the formation of individuals, teams, and communities is the path to relational health and resilience.
This is what we mean when we say poverty is relational as well as economic. Relational poverty is isolation and broken connection, and it can exist alongside material need or entirely apart from it.
HOW WE DEFINE OUR TERMS
Resilient teams and communities are made up of humble learners who honor the complexity of life.
Each of the following terms provide a roadmap for what it looks like to heal and remake the many parts that make up you and your network of relationships.
These six terms recur across our programs and materials. Each one means something slightly different here than in everyday use, so we define them plainly.
Relationships
We believe relationships are life. There are networks of relationships that make up "us" as individuals, teams, and communities. Relational resilience begins with understanding how integral relationships are to health and wholeness.
Individual/Self
When we say an "individual" or "self," we are imagining a network of relationships, beginning with the interplay of yourself and your mind, your body, and your spirit. How you relate to each of these is inseparable from transformational development.
Team
When we say "team," we are thinking more broadly than just an organization. For us, "team" is your closest relationships, but that can vary from context to context. Your team might be your family, your floor buddies, your department, or your church staff.
Community
We see "community" more broadly than just a geographic area in proximity. It might be a group that has a shared affinity, language, ethnic heritage, or belief system. Community, especially in cities, might also include networks of smaller communities within a block or a few miles.
Leader
When we say "leader," we picture anyone who helps guide the direction of something and holds it together. To lead influences something, someone, or a collection of things in its growth and direction, like a trellis supports a vine or a tendon enables the movement for a limb.
Resilience
"Resilience" is the capability of a network of relationships to recover its intended shape [purpose] after deformation caused especially by compressive stress [poverty]. Resilient leaders influence relationships, themselves included, to recover purpose and grow as God leads.
We/ve
We/ve (pronounced wēv), is a play on words that combines both the English contraction for "we have" with the picture of someone weaving, taking seemingly separate parts into a cohesive whole. Our We/ve curriculum contains 7 story-based steps to help communities heal and grow. Each We/ve group exists as a small circle of neighbors who meet regularly to share stories, build resilience, and strengthen relationships together.
Reinforce Your Strengths
OUR COMMUNITY PARTNERS
Resilient Communities Center partners with CAMA Relief and Development, Cultivate, Evangelical Friends Church, Friends of Refugees, Global Frontier Missions, Grace Village, and Steady Hope Counseling.
