CARRI Announcement: New Organizational Home for CARRI with Meridian Institute

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Thu, 2011-09-29 17:42 — Kathy Gilbeaux

The Community and Regional Resilience Institute (CARRI) is pleased to announce that effective in October 2011, its organizational home will be with Meridian Institute. This new phase of the CARRI-Meridian relationship is intended to leverage both organizations’ deep expertise in building collaborative foundations for resilience and stability and to assist CARRI as it transitions from being a program of a National Laboratory to its new status as part of a neutral, non-governmental organization that supports communities in their resilience building efforts and also works with state, regional, and national stakeholders to create incentives and support for community resilience.

This partnership is a natural evolution for two organizations that have worked closely together over the past 4 years to discover knowledge, tools, and processes that contribute to a national culture of resilience and to foster greater national policy support for community resilience efforts.

CARRI has amassed an extensive network of knowledge and support for community resilience through the convening of more than 150 community leaders, national policy experts, resilience researchers, and other practitioners to glean what is needed to make American communities more resilient to the disasters and other risks they face. The knowledge and insights from these stakeholders was ground tested through a multi-year collaboration with local partner communities who helped instruct and validate the lessons regarding community resilience. CARRI has established an identity and presence as a source of credible information, tools, analysis, and policy support for community resilience. This foundation will be built upon as CARRI transitions to its new organizational home within Meridian.

Meridian has a long history of work on resilience and global stability issues that were essential to nurturing a strategic national stakeholder community of interest; helping to translate complex scientific, community, and social factors into easily understood tools and processes; and facilitating the diverse stakeholder engagements involved in CARRI’s community resilience work. Meridian has traditionally worked in a range of areas – food security, sustainability, critical infrastructure protection, disaster management, climate change, ocean policy, natural resource management – that powerfully inform questions regarding resilience and stability. As the need for integrative approaches that work across institutions and sectors to build capacity at the community level has become increasingly critical, Meridian has become recognized for its ability to foster these integrative, multi-stakeholder solutions to challenging societal issues. CARRI’s community resilience effort draws on Meridian’s expertise with holistic, multi-stakeholder, and boundary-spanning approaches that ensure durable community decisions leading to more resilient communities and a more resilient nation.

Central to the partnership has been CARRI’s and Meridian’s collaboration to develop a practical and collaborative approach to community resilience building – the Community Resilience System (CRS). The strengths and experiences of both organizations combined to create a web-enabled process that helps communities to assess, measure, and improve their resilience to threats and disruptions of all kinds, and ultimately be rewarded for their efforts.

Together, CARRI and Meridian are well positioned to support national and international resilience building and stability efforts that require collaborative, multi-stakeholder approaches. Starting this fall, CARRI will support 7 initial leading communities around the nation as they pilot the CRS, with strategic consultation, convening, and facilitation support from the Meridian staff who have worked with CARRI to build the system. CARRI and Meridian will also work to foster support for community resilience at the national level, by convening national stakeholders to develop incentives, technical assistance, and education and communication efforts that bolster community efforts.

CARRI staff can be reached at:

Warren Edwards (as of October 15, 2011)

CARRI Executive Director

***@***.***

404.272.0436 (mobile)

Ann Farrar ( as of September 30, 2011)

CARRI Deputy Director

***@***.***

865.850.6940 (mobile)

The CARRI website will remain www.ResilientUS.org.

Meridian Project Coordinator Liz Duxbury will continue to support Warren and Ann with meeting planning and logistics. Liz can be reached at 970.513.8340 x225 and ***@***.*** if you have any questions or need assistance reaching the CARRI team.

Please let us know if you have any questions as we transition to our organizational home with Meridian. We are excited about this new phase of CARRI’s life and look forward to working with you going forward to promote greater community resilience.

Kind regards,

Warren Edwards

Ann Farrar

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