Moving the Needle Towards Resilient Communities

Wie Yusuf is Professor of Public Service at Old Dominion University. Her areas of expertise are in public finance, infrastructure planning, coastal community resilience, climate change and sea level rise, public participation and stakeholder engagement. She develops resilience products for use by general, non-technical audiences including planners, businesses, and residents.Tanya Denckla Cobb is Director of the Institute for Engagement & Negotiation at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, University of Virginia. She is a seasoned environmental and public policy mediator, working with people across all sectors to address challenging, complex issues through equitable collaboration and seeking sustainable solutions.Sierra Gladfelter is a Senior Associate at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Engagement & Negotiation, where she leads community‑engaged climate resilience, facilitation, and collaborative planning projects. Sierra has over a decade of climate adaptation experience, and has been the project manager of The RAFT for the last seven years.Elizabeth Andrews is Distinguished Law & Policy Fellow at the Institute for Engagement & Negotiation, University of Virginia. Her expertise in climate resiliency law and policy derives from many years of teaching and practice with the Virginia Coastal Policy Center at William & Mary Law School and the Virginia Attorney General’s office.

• 1. Setting the stage for equitable resilience: The RAFT approach to an equity-centered path for resilience planning and implementation 2. Centering equity in resilience: Equitable resilience as a process and an outcome 3. Measuring what matters: Using quantitative and qualitative resilience assessments tailored to community needs 4. Small sparks, big waves: Simple projects can have outsized impacts as catalysts 5. Weaving resilience into the mainstream: Integrating resilience and equity across different facets of community planning 6. Growing and sustaining whole-community resilience for the long haul 7. Partnering for resilience: Guidance for effective partnerships

This book is an essential resource for resilience professionals. Drawing on years of experience and grounded in the diverse coastal Virginia region, it provides an accessible and actionable framework for equitable resilience planning to improve a community’s approach to extreme weather and compounding challenges.Michelle Covi, Coastal Resilience DOD Liaison, Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant, University of GeorgiaAnchored by earned trust in the community-led co-production model, and the objective technical expertise of The RAFT team, this field guide draws upon evolutionary best practices in building equitable environmental, social, and economic resilience across vulnerable communities. Building on years of work with coastal localities across a wide range of stakeholders - unique to each - this process ensures authentic unbiased collaboration, essential for a long-term structured planning and adaptive outcomes for use by local and regional communities and governments.Ann C. Phillips, Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy (Ret.), former Special Assistant to the Governor for Coastal Adaptation and Protection, Commonwealth of Virginia