Resilient Communities Embrace Diversity and Inclusion

Episode Transcript

We’ve been talking about some of the problems that people come up against when they’re thinking about getting back out there in the community and getting engaged in some community endeavours.

Adopt The Language of the Culture

A quick tip before we go off to the news, it would be around language and cultural barriers, which can sometimes be a significant obstacle for people.

At my local Toastmasters group, we have some people there that have English as their second language.

They’re remarkable and it’s such a fascination to me how they can completely embrace a whole new culture, a whole new language, a whole new way of life, and come out to Australia and it’s a lot.

Sometimes even myself, I felt like a bit of an outsider in certain community spaces due to cultural differences.

Kim Harris

Sometimes groups that I involve myself in, have got more males than females and so I can feel a little bit out of place sometimes.

But it’s very interesting for me to be involved in communities where I feel like an outsider.

Because I’m looking to close that gap and feel that sense of belonging, it doesn’t matter where I am.

Some tips, one thing is I’ve had to embrace, is being open-minded and patient.

I’ve had to approach cultural barriers with that open mind and just a willingness to learn and to adapt to the situation, understanding that miscommunication and misunderstandings do occur.

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

I find this between men and women, I don’t know about you, but sometimes I do not understand male behaviour. But with patience and humility, and I’ve discussed this with the fellas, it goes both ways.

Sometimes they look at me and think I’m completely mental as well, but we do have that genuine desire to connect, and that’s all about being open-minded and patient in that situation. So that’s the first thing we want to be open-minded and patient.

Cultural Exchange Programs

Second thing is we can find language and cultural exchange opportunities.

Back in the day when I was going through high school, you can put your hand up and take on exchange students from different cultures, which I think if you’ve got a spare room, and you’ve got the inclination, I found it amazing again going back to some of the Chinese people that I knew going through high school, they would go into Australian families where the Australian family didn’t even speak one word of Chinese, or any of the languages or the dialects within China.

It was incredible and I think amazing experience for the exchange student but also for that Australian family.

Expand Your Worldview

Find some cultural exchange opportunities. They do exist and you’ll be helping someone out and expanding your worldview in the process and that feeds into the third tip which is seek understanding.

It’s educating yourself about the cultural norms and values and traditions of the community that you want to engage with.

My Chinese friend back in my high school days, she wanted to do everything that was Australian. She wanted to completely immerse herself in our traditions. That meant meat pies and peas and going to the footy, she a great role model. She was one of those I beacons, or one of those role models around this idea of seeking understanding.

She wanted to know about our traditions. She wanted to engage with it.

We can do lots of things and we don’t necessarily need to take on an exchange student.

We can also just simply read books or watch documentaries.

Eat Diverse Cuisines

We can also go out to different restaurants. There are some great restaurants with different cuisines, and we all need to eat. So why not branch out?

Seek some education on some alternate cultures by connecting over a meal.

Understanding and respecting cultural differences can help bridge gaps and foster meaningful connections.

As a bonus tip I would encourage you to learn a language if you can.

Language and Translation Apps Make Learning Simple and Fun

We’ve got fantastic technology and language learning apps now that can facilitate us learning different languages and some of them are free.

My daughter’s doing a free online thing. I think it’s called bilingual or bilingual. I can’t remember what it’s called but it’s a free app and she’s learning Japanese.

So just an example there, lots of online platforms that can help you to learn other languages.

We also have translation tools, to facilitate understanding and embracing of different language or cultural barriers.

We’ve been talking about some of the problems that people encounter when they think “I probably should get out and about in the community a bit”.

“I know that I’m much better off when I am connected to other people and connecting with like-minded people”.

What are some of the things that people encounter when they want to start getting out and about?

Overcoming Barriers to Community Engagement

Some sorts of things that they’ve got to overcome first.

We’ve talked about some of those simple one’s time constraints.

We’ve all got time constraints these days.

We can have some social anxiety or shyness or lack of confidence.

Preoccupation with Personal Issues

Sometimes there are language barriers or cultural barriers, but this next one is preoccupation with personal issues.

Some of these things that we’re dealing with are challenging. So, if you are dealing with a personal challenge such as a mental health issue or a relationship problem or some financial hardship all those things take their toll on your energy, and they limit your capacity then to engage in a community building type activity.

We can become preoccupied with those personal issues.

This requires self-reflection, a lot of self-care, a lot of self-compassion and taking some proactive steps to shift our focus and learn to look at it from a different perspective.

Look at things from a completely different standpoint.

Tips for Addressing Preoccupation with Personal Issues

Practice Self-awareness with Consciousness Raising Processes

There are some tips there. The first one is to practice self-awareness.

This is again one of those kinds of things that people talk about all the time. We all know awareness is the first step, but we do need to practice it.

We do need to practice being in-conscious (I call it), self-aware.

Our bodies are amazingly created.

I believe we have “aware intelligence”.

Stop, Slow Down, Take a Breath

We can be very intelligent when we stop, slow down, become more conscious of the moment and practice being present to what’s going for us going on for us in the moment.

That’s about cultivating self-awareness and recognizing when you’re becoming overly preoccupied with your own personal issues.

It’s paying attention to your thoughts, your emotions and your behaviours that can indicate that you are just completely preoccupied with all that and acknowledging it – that is the first step to addressing it.

Keep a Thought Journal or Diary

There’s lots of things we can do. There are some great free mental health resources available. They’re linked on my website where you can get some downloadable thought type charts where you can track your thoughts, you can track your emotions, you can track your behaviours and that way you’re starting to level up how aware you are of your thoughts and your feelings and your behaviours in any given day.

Very good thing to track because what is measured can be improved.

We don’t know where we are, until we know where we are, so we want to find out where we are and move forward from there.

That’s the first thing we want to practice self-awareness to know when we are being overly self-occupied.

Put Your Problems Aside for a Bit and Help Someone Else

The second thing is helping others.

Now this is a tricky one because I think we can overdo it one way or the other.

Some people are more disposed to helping others even at great personal cost. But some people are so preoccupied with themselves, they’re not helping anyone else at all.

We want to find some sort of balance there, and shifting the focus from your own personal issues to help another person can be very helpful and transformative. It can give you a break from your own drama and helping somebody else when they’re in a tight spot, or a tricky spot, can give you a good feeling.

Engage in Simple Acts of Kindness

Engaging in acts of kindness, or volunteer work, or community service it does cost something for you. You’ve got to put in the time and the effort and the energy, but it also has that kickback of feeling good and knowing that you’re contributing to the well-being of others. It can provide you with a sense of purpose and broaden your perspective beyond your own personal concerns.

Something to think about perhaps if you’re preoccupied with something that’s going on for you, perhaps you could go out and help somebody else and get out of your own head for a while, because your problems aren’t going to go away. They’ll be there when you come back. It just gives you a bit of a reprieve from them.

Set Goals that Address Your Problems Specifically

That’s the second tip and the third tip would be to set goals and take action.

It’s kind of identifying specific goals or action steps that you can take toward your personal issues. It’s breaking down the actual problem. I think there’s an acronym called Dogstar D-O-G-S-T-A-R and it’s a problem solution type framework that starts with “D” Define. We’ve got to clearly define what is the actual problem.

You want to break down that problem into some manageable tasks and then start taking proactive steps towards addressing and resolving the problem. We’re not putting our head in the sand or pretending the problems not there. We’re taking action and helping gain that sense of control and empowerment.

Make Sure You’re Addressing the Right Problem

If you’ve got some overwhelming problems, then seek professional help if you need to.

All these websites have great links to people that you can connect with if you need some help with your personal issues because they’ve just become so overwhelming that they’re affecting everything, your daily functioning, your mental well-being, under those circumstances, consider getting some help.

The DOGSTAR approach is one I would highly recommend I think it’s a fantastic framework for being very problem solution orientated.

If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem.

Sometimes we need to clearly define what the problem is to begin with because sometimes we are solving a problem that doesn’t need solving, where we’re a few steps aside from what we should be focusing on so perhaps you could look into the DOGSTAR framework if that sounds like it could be helpful for you.

Great if you need some skills in solving problems, and if you’ve got some personal issues that you’re dealing with.

That’s the one of the other kinds of I guess difficulties or challenges that come up for people when they’re working on getting out there and getting connected sometimes they’re just completely preoccupied with what they’ve already got on their plate on a personal level so some tips there to help you break out of that.

Now we’ve got another song from Snow Patrol, and this is “Hands Open”.

Overcoming Barriers to Community Engagement

We’ve been talking about the connection between community and mental health, and I’ve been talking about some of the challenges that people typically feel or that can come up when we think about getting out there and becoming more involved in the community.

This one’s a common one, and I wonder if you relate.

Fear of Judgement or Rejection

Have you ever felt any kind of fear of judgment or rejection when you do go out to build connection?

Do you worry about what other people might think about you?

Being judged and rejected by others can hold us back from putting ourselves out there, and actively participating in community activities.

This is normal and typical, and I think it’s interesting that judgment is such a part of us. It’s built into us biologically.

There’s lots of people who are out there who think “I’m not judgmental at all” and you hear them proclaim this.

But no. We are. We all are.

All we need to do is make sure our judgments are helping us not hindering us.

We want to make sure our evaluations are rich.

Tips for Addressing a Fear of Judgement or Rejection

Sometimes the shoe can be on the other foot, and we can be the one receiving judgment, or criticism from others.

Recognize the Fear Exists and is Normal

Number one tip is we want to recognize fear exists which is what drives judgement and rejection. Accept that judgment and rejection is a common human experience, it’s not about to go away anytime soon, it’s part of our survival instinct, we judge things all the time, and everybody faces judgment and rejection at some point in their lives as a result.

The thing to separate, is that it doesn’t define your worth, or your ability to do something, or not do something.

Kim Harris

It’s the way that people are perceiving things, as good, or bad.

Recognize this and acknowledge this is the way things are. Trying to change things that are the way they are is futile. We must create something new in its place that doesn’t yet exist.

That’s the first one we want to recognize fear, and the cool thing is in the work that I do, I do a lot of work around fear, because it’s such a common thing that stops us in so many areas of our life, not just getting out there and getting connected with other people, but we can have fear about all sorts of things, fear of flying, fear of heights, fear of spiders, we can have the fear of being afraid (believe it or not).

We want to recognize that fear is along for the ride, and we want to work with it, not against it.

Build Personal Resilience as well as Collective Resilience

The second tip is to build resilience.

We talked about collective resilience earlier, but you can also build your own personal resilience as well.

You can strengthen your resilience by learning coping strategies.

Learn How to Cope by Getting Better Skills

Talking about some of the other tips that I’ve given have been around learning skills, and learning coping skills specifically, to navigate potential rejection or judgment and practicing being relaxed in the face of judgment, or in the face of criticism, is something that some of us must learn, more than others.

I do a lot of public facing things so it’s common to be judged, and rejected, and annoy people, and rub people the wrong way, and you don’t even mean to do it, so it’s learning to be okay with that and relax your body and not feel too overly anxious about it.

It’s knowing that you can’t please everybody all the time.

It’s engaging in this process in a very mindful way and not doing things to make yourself feel any worse.

Kim Harris

A good coping strategy is learning not to stop berating yourself, for example, it’s relaxing and saying to yourself, “You’re doing the best thing you can”. Again, seeking some help with learning those skills can be good as well, learning social skills, or coping strategies for when you get out and about can be something that will help build your resilience.

Perfectionism is the Lowest Standard

The third tip is to challenge your own perfectionism.

Recognizing that striving for perfection is an unrealistic goal, and one of my mentors described to me one time, that perfection is the lowest standard.

We have people that denote themselves a perfectionist, and that’s why they claim, they don’t do things. It’s quite funny when you flip it, and you think well that’s a low standard.

It’s offensive to a perfectionist, to tell them they have very low standards.

Kim Harris

The reason being when something is perfect, it means that it is whole and complete, which means you can’t add anything to it or take anything away from it.

There’s no growth in it.

Two of basic needs for a human being, so we have six core needs, and two of those, which are needs that everybody must have to one degree or another, is the need for contribution and the need for growth.

If you are striving for perfection, meaning we can’t add or take anything away, we are not setting ourselves up for growth and contribution.

To grow and contribute is a high standard.

Kim Harris

Perfectionism, in this way is a low standard because it doesn’t compare to growth and contribution.

It doesn’t help you meet two of the greatest needs, in life.

I know it’s a hard one to sell, but I’ve seen this to be true in the work I do with people.

Embrace the concept of being good enough and focus on progress rather than perfection.

Kim Harris

Making mistakes and being vulnerable are part of the process.

That’s why it’s helpful to be around other people that are on the same progress path or on the same journey as you.

You are progressing in the same way, as you are working on the same skills.

Join Skills Building Community Activities

You can cross pollinate. You can share the experience. You can share the load.

You can have people there to see that moment you learn something and celebrate your progress with you.

I remember training at Freeform (a mixed martial art form I did) and I was trying to do a particular exercise.

I was trying to do it for three years!

Three years, a couple of hours a week. Trying to do this one thing!

I couldn’t get it. I kept falling, and I kept falling, and I kept falling.

Then one day, I finally got it, and all the rest of the club members were there, and they all joyously celebrated with me, because it was an achievement.

Kim Harris

A three-year-long achievement!

It didn’t matter that I had fallen, and been vulnerable, and talked every time thinking I’m never going to get this and making those mistakes over and over.

Learn in a Community

It was totally worth it in the end, but that is the importance of being in a community when you’re learning.

They can see your growth.

They can see where you started, and where you’ve gotten to, and so they can be the ones there to champion your progress.

Especially the times when you can’t see it for yourself.

There are some tips around working with a fear of judgment, or rejection.

Firstly, you’ve got to recognize that fear is a long for the ride, you want to build some resilience around what you’re afraid of, some coping strategies, and you want to challenge any tendency toward perfectionism in your life, because that is when you become a closed system and you’re no longer growing or contributing.

Some cool tips.

Another song. This is Jamaica with “Corner of the Earth”

Overcoming Barriers to Community Engagement

Physical Limitations and Disabilities

Tips for Addressing Limitations

Do you face any physical limitations or disabilities that make it challenging to access certain community spaces or engage in specific activities?

Do you run a business, for example, recently I did an entrepreneurial program, and one of the things I observed when we were doing our planning for our businesses, they had a whole section devoted to accessibility type things.

It was great to see businesses are encouraged to make their businesses more accessible to all people, so that everyone can become more involved in the community.

Individuals with physical limitations can face even greater obstacles in accessing certain community spaces, or certain activities that require mobility or special accommodations.

Look for Inspirational Role Models

I’ve participated in martial art form I mentioned, and they welcome people with mobility issues, which is amazing.

I watched a fantastic episode on TV last night, which was “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”, there’s a gentleman in show, who had become paralysed from the waist down, and he created out of that experience, he created a not-for-profit which is “Disabled, but not Really”. This this guy exudes life, he’s a fantastic smile, he’s got a great message and mission. In the episode I watched last night, they changed his house around for him so that he could be independent, 100% independent in his own space, which I thought was fantastic.

It’s something to think about and be inspired by when we’re thinking about our own limits, and our own disabilities.

I have a number of injuries now, that make certain things challenging.

Embrace and Accept the Limitations You Can’t Change

The first tip for anyone who’s in that situation, you’ve got to embrace and accept the physical limitations that you have.

It can be very hard.

When you start to lose some of the capacities you previously enjoyed, it’s recognizing those physical limits don’t define your worth, or limit your potential.

If you had a look at this guy on this episode, it was incredible. He’s won bodybuilding tournaments, even though when he lifts, he does chin-ups and things like that, and he lifts himself and his wheelchair.

He’s incredibly fit and healthy in every way.

He’s a real inspiration.

He’s fully embraced and accepted where he’s at in life, which is what I think is captured in name of his not-for-profit “Disabled, But Not” It’s not limiting his potential in any way.

Kim Harris

The next tip he’s explored and adapted his sport and recreational activities around his disability, and his physical limitations.

Adapt Activities to Your Abilities

There are lots of adaptive sports and recreational activities that can align with our interests and abilities.

All sort of organisations, accept people with different levels of bodily function. You can still participate and enjoy the benefits of physical activity, as it was observed in this episode and I have observed this in real life, in the clubs that I’ve been involved in.

Advocate for Accessibility and Inclusion

The third tip, which aligns with all of them, is you want to be an advocate for accessibility and inclusion.

If you’ve got a business of your own, how welcoming is your business to people that have disabilities? Or limits, physical limits? Are you promoting inclusive practices, and actively participating with people and your customers to aim to improve the accessibility of your workplace, for example, or your place of work?

Can you be an advocate for people, to make sure everyone is included, and make things as accessible as possible.

I think this is a marvellous thing to think about.

Be Aware of and Embrace Community Diversity

It goes back to this open-mindedness and embracing the diversity that needs to be always present within a community.

Tips there on overcoming any barriers that you might have with regard to your own physical limits, or any kind of disability.

Let’s play another song now. This is Mental as Anything, “Let’s Go to Paradise”

Developing Resilient Communities

Today I’ve been talking about the connection between community and mental health and sharing tips and education around the importance of connecting with your community for your mental health.

I’ve also been sharing, how to do it, if you’ve got any kind of barriers or personal challenges.

And I’ve talked about some of the most common barriers.

Because we do have them.

They are common.

Asking the Questions to Initiate Change

I’m looking at these ideas, and asking the question, do you personally have a wide network of friends or acquaintances in your community?

Do you feel like you’ve got a support system that encourages and supports your efforts in life?

Some people have a limited network of friends and acquaintances.

It can happen for all sorts of reasons.

Reasons for Change

I’ve got a few friends that have immigrated from other countries, a few friends that are from New Zealand.

They’ve come over, and they don’t know that many people and the people that they grew up with are all back home.

We do have these situations, we find ourselves in, and adjustments that we need to make as an adult.

Kim Harris

I find it is sometimes a little bit harder for an adult to find those avenues for friendships, and things like that, but community involvement is a good way to approach it because quite often the community groups that are out there, revolve around a particular interest or hobby.

If you have a particular interest or hobby then looking for groups that do that thing will be a good way of connecting you with like-minded souls.

It’s fun to participate in discussions and seek advice with fellow people like that and build connection through shared interests.

I hope I’ve inspired you today to think about your support systems.

To think about how engaged you are with your community, and if you need some more inspiration there are some great role models out there for us to think about and be inspired by.

Use the Change Framework and Nine Processes to Help You

In the change process, in the last season of the show, I outlined a framework for change, which is basically these stages, the six stages that we go through when we are embarking upon a change, and if we want to be successful in the change process, let’s say we are quite reclusive and we want to go from being introverted to connecting with other like-minded introverts out there around a shared interest, that might be the change we’re seeking, because of all the things I’ve talked about, because of the benefits of connecting with others.

Now if that is a change that you want, you will go through, and move through these six stages of change.

One of the ideas contained within those six stages, there’s a stage where we want to prepare for a change, or contemplate a change, so it’s important if we’re in contemplation, or if we’re getting to the point where we think we might want to change something, and we just need to prepare.

Use Role Models and Learn from Them

When preparing, that’s where role models, social role models can be fantastic.

There are some well-known ones.

People that have done fantastic things from a social point of view.

Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Nelson Mandela.

We know a lot about those people.

There are some less well-known ones I find equally as inspirational.

The Green Belt Started from One Woman Inspiring Her Community

There was one African woman who won the noble peace prize at one point, she founded the green belt movement in Kenya. How it all started for her is, she just literally walked out to where the land crossed over into the desert, and the desert was encroaching upon the farming land.

She took a handful of seeds, went out there, and she put them in the dirt.

She went back there every day carried water a long way and started to water these plants and started what is called the green belt.

They’re pushing back the desert which I think is a fantastic story.

Her organization is focused on that community-based tree planting effort which combats deforestation and as I said promotes green areas for sustainable and forward-moving development of our land, as well as our community.

People take great actions for our environment and for social change.

Plenty of inspiring examples on all different kinds of initiatives.

Depending on your bent, you might not have an environmental bent and that’s okay, yours might be more around social justice, or civil rights or even through things like promoting democracy, or alleviating poverty, fostering a community problem solving approach.

There are so many organizations out there that you can be inspired to join.

Look to Local Role Models

A local role model is the work of Bruce Argyle, he’s a wonderful negotiator and he works in conflict resolution for not-for-profits. It’s a skill set where he can start to promote reconciliation, and empowerment, and strengthen relationships, which I think is fantastic.

If you think about everything I’ve been talking about over the last couple of hours and piecing that all together, community is built around your interests and your passions, and sometimes we won’t know what our passions are until we get out there and start to pursue some of the things that interest us.

Then what we can find is as we get more and more engaged in the thing that interests us, our emotional buy-in increases, we find other people that fuel our passions, and make our passions come to life. I would encourage you out of everything I’ve talked about, and hoping to inspire you about, is to build your community connections around your interests.

All of this will help your mental health.

It will help build your social capital.

It will help you in so many ways.

Get out there and start contributing!

The Key Factors of Resilient Communities

There are some key factors in building resilient communities and I’ve touched on a lot of them today.

I’ll summarize them.

Leverage Your Social Capital

One of them is this idea of strong social connections, and social capital, if we want to have a resilient community we need to build strong social connections, and we need to increase our social capital.

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and how you know them.

The idea, like six degrees of separation, says that we are only six people away from knowing someone who could be significant in contributing to our idea, and have the influence we need to leverage.

Kim Harris

We need to be connected and we need to create these ecosystems socially that support us in helping us to be not only more resilient but having those people that we can rely on for support and for information sharing and for the problem-solving capacity, and especially when times are hard but also when times are good.

We can value and get a lot out of our social connections and social capital in good times and bad.

Effective Communication and Information Sharing

That takes into consideration the second key factor, and that we are effective communicators, and we’re good at sharing information, and we’re good at extending a lending hand, to help each other.

We’re good at sharing information, we are in the information age, we’re not short of information, some of it’s not that accurate, it’s up to us to qualify the sources of information. Asking those qualifying questions of people. Who are they, and what have they done? What have they achieved, what is the outcomes they’ve achieved? Because that can qualify whether they’ve got the goods for you, they’ve got the information that you need.

Effective communication and information sharing is vital in building a resilient community and it’s important to meet those types of people that are transparent, and who don’t withhold communication, or withhold critical information, that enables us to have a trusting relationship with them.

Open lines of communication, helps us to respond swiftly if there is an emergency or a crisis.

Kim Harris

We need to have those accessible and reliable communication channels that facilitates this type of sharing of information.

From the point of view of skills-learning, do you have effective communication skills? Do you share information freely? And do you source your information from credible people before you share it? Do you share it in a timely way when it’s needed?

These are great skills.

Local Leadership and Community Participation

The third factor, which also takes a degree of skill is local leadership and community participation.

When I look at Australia as a whole, and reflect on the leadership vacuum that exists, I don’t know if you’ve observed this, where you work, or where you live, but I have worked in organizations where they just didn’t have any kind of leadership structure and as a result of that, people were haphazard, and it was not a cohesive or functioning unit.

We weren’t all on the same page.

Local leadership is so important in building resilient communities.

It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got to go out and become the prime minister, it means you can be a leader where you are.

Kim Harris

By communicating.

Participating in your own community, for example, you can be a leader as a mother. I take my role of leadership seriously, and I know my children are not going to do what I say, they’re going to do what I do.

My behaviour speaks louder than words when it comes to being a parent.

It’s often the case in other spheres of influence that I am operating within. Effective leadership skills are worth learning about.

Community Problem-solving at it’s Best

The skill of collaboration, sharing information, and sharing resources, we know that it empowers the community to solve their problems.

When we are sharing these types of things, and where someone says, “I’ll be accountable for this I’ll put my hand up, and I’ll be a part of this. I’ll participate in this. I’ll encourage people to have a voice and come alongside me with this initiative or take ownership of a particular part of a project, all their own accord.

Then we’re collectively working towards these common goals.

I think leadership is something that needs to be looked at within our community, take an interest in who you vote for.

It’s a key factor in building a resilient community.

You might already have some of these skills, and I would encourage you to deploy them in useful ways.

Robust Infrastructure and Resources

Another key factor is robust infrastructure and resources.

One of the things we discovered in the last storms, a couple of years ago, was the devastation to our infrastructure, our roads, our sewage systems, and telephone lines. There were people without power for months, people without sewage.

We all are at the effect when our infrastructure breaks down.

We want to make sure, as a community, we’ve got adequate resources to withstand and recover from the shocks and stresses of life.

There’s no rhyme or reason, to a storm that just comes out of nowhere, but we do need to be mindful when we’re thinking and building our physical infrastructure, such as roads and buildings and utilities and even things like health care and access to all those things and access to services.

Our access to emergency management systems, for example, we want to be able to respond quickly and adapt and recover quickly when we have these shocks and stresses, that come about as a course of being human.

Again, this is about developing skill sets.

Leveraging Diversity for Innovation and Solutions

Perhaps you are in construction, you might already know how to build a road, I have no idea how to build a road, but I know people that do know how to build roads!

And that is the whole thing, it is about us coming together to share what we know.

To share our expertise.

To be leaders.

To understand what it takes to build a resilient community means addressing these sorts of things. Infrastructure and resources are a key factor in resilient communities.

Fostering Resilience Through Collaboration and Inclusiveness

The fifth and final key factor would be something that I’ve already touched on, the diversity and inclusion.

Communities that foster inclusivity and recognize the value in all our diversity, I’m talking about the diversity that we have in our skill sets and in our perspectives. The way that we view the world, the way we see the world.

The VIA strengths analysis lists 25 major strengths in human nature, to know your top five is empowering. You’ll also see the that you’re quite unique and that other people don’t necessarily share your strengths.

That’s why combined we’re even stronger because we have different strengths, and we need different strengths at different times.

Inclusive communities ensure that all individuals, regardless of their background, regardless of their strengths, regardless of how actively they participate, or contribute – when giving resources and providing support for one another – we’re leveraging the power of diversity.

We are better equipped to address complicated things and create innovative solutions when we embrace the power of diversity.

Kim Harris

On that note I’m going to play one more song and call today a close.

I’m sure I’ve given you plenty to think about.

In Conclusion

In conclusion, the connection between community engagement and mental health is profound and multifaceted.

By embracing diversity, fostering inclusivity, and building strong social connections, individuals can experience a sense of belonging and support that enhances their mental well-being.

Overcoming barriers and actively participating in community activities not only benefits individuals but also contributes to the resilience and vitality of the community as a whole.

Let us strive to create communities that are inclusive, supportive, and resilient, where everyone has the opportunity to thrive and contribute positively to the collective well-being.

Join me for next season’s episodes of Stories of Change.

In the meantime, take care of yourselves and each other.