Pride and Purpose: Empowering communities in disasters

Over the past two weeks, devastating floods have hit parts of Europe, China and India, a stark reminder of the increasing frequency of extreme weather events driven by climate change. Yet, in these most difficult of times, when communities are struck by disaster, something very special happens: people come together to help each other like never before.

Heroes & Honeymoons

The accepted wisdom from so-called ‘disaster scholars’ is that there are two phases that directly follow a crisis. The first is known as?the ‘Hero’ phase and is marked by people taking personal risks to save others in the direct aftermath of the crisis.

Once the immediate danger has passed, impacted communities enter what is known as the ‘Honeymoon’ phase as they start to deal with the aftermath together. These phases are marked by?a surge of solidarity, altruism, inclusiveness, empathy and self-organisation that is unseen in non-crisis times.

In a disaster, people show the incredible ability to be more ‘human’ than in their everyday life and they experience, first-hand, a society they didn’t think could exist.

Social psychologists attribute this behaviour to the creation of a common social identity known as a ‘disaster community’ that includes all of those who were impacted by the crisis.

Disaster Community

Be it China, Germany or India, when the water recedes and people can return to their homes they are confronted with the devastation of their destroyed homes. However, they are also suddenly plunged into a hive of community action. Neighbours who had barely even talked to each other before start to self-organise rescue operations, or work together to remove debris and improve the living conditions of the community. We have already seen stories of solidarity after the floods with?winemakers helping each other in Germany’s Ahr?district or?travel agents offering their app to help people find free hotel beds in Henan. While the media might report on the surge of ‘physical’ solidarity, emotional support like empathy also flourishes in this period.

Changemakers and crisis response workers can support the creation of these disaster communities, engaging with and boosting the confidence and pride of impacted communities.?We can share their stories not as victims but as heroes, showing what can be achieved when people come together as a community.?With these inspiring stories, we can rebuild the trust in our fellow humans and build societies fit for the 21st century that sees solidarity, inclusion, self-organisation, empathy and resilience not as a fleeting honeymoon, but as a long-term shift.

While crises of course bring incredible hardships,?they also provide opportunities to shift cultures and create societal mindsets that will better equip us to deal with the challenges of the coming decades.

We will need communities with the exact same qualities we see in the honeymoon of a crisis in order to deal with the increasingly brutal impacts of the climate crisis but also drive a fast and just transition to a low carbon economy.

Ideas for Crisis Response

Here are some short tips to think about when designing your responses to crises:

• Design interventions that give impacted communities pride and purpose instead of portraying them as victims in need of help.
• Give communities positive experiences they will remember.
• Create initiatives and structures that will be sustainable in the long-term and helpful during future crises.
• Highlight these initiatives and stories in your communications, feeding back into the community’s sense of pride and purpose.

This blog is part of Mindworks’?Disrupted Mind series, exploring?how the human mind works during a crisis?and what we can learn from this to drive change.

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Authors: Stefan Flothmann, Robin Perkins, Ieva Rozentale

Originally posted on Medium.