By now, many of us have experienced the impacts of a changing climate firsthand: power outages, extreme heat, floods, and other emergencies have become more commonplace, disproportionately impacting vulnerable residents throughout our community. These impacts can be devastating and isolating, especially for community members who don’t have the resources to cope with them. Resilience Hubs can make a difference.
What are Resilience Hubs?
Community Resilience Hubs provide support and resources that increase community and personal adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience before, during, and after natural and human-made disasters. They are often created in existing and trusted locations like schools, community centers, churches, and libraries and as a meeting ground for collaboration, shelter, and shared resources. At their core, they are designed to support residents in becoming more self-determining and socially connected to enhance their ability to adapt in the face of hardship or disaster.
What kinds of support do these Hubs actually offer?
Resilience Hubs can offer a range of services. They may distribute food, act as a cooling center during extreme heat events, facilitate disaster preparedness training, provide emergency services, host off grid charging during a power outage or shutdown, and more. In the All-In Clark County Community Sustainability and Climate Action Plan, the County established an intent to establish a network of Resilience Hubs to ensure that all residents are prepared for the impacts of climate hazards.
How is the County putting this plan into action?
At the January 2025 All-In Implementation Workshop, stakeholders were brought together to discuss how to put these ambitious goals into action. During this workshop, the group determined two main next steps: 1) to develop a Resilience Hub Advisory group that could focus on identifying and cataloging existing resources in Southern Nevada, and 2) to create a guidebook that CBOs and other organizations could use to build out their own Resilience Hub facilities.
The Resilience Hub Advisory Group comprised of community organizations, institutions, and government partners in Southern Nevada. This group of dedicated stakeholders met monthly over the course of four months to develop a set of criteria for Resilience Hubs in Southern Nevada, resulting in the creation of a ‘How To’ Guide for establishing Resilience Hubs in Southern Nevada. This guide was modeled on the USDN Guide to Developing Resilience Hubs and adapted specifically for Southern Nevada. It explains the basics principles of a Resilience Hub, outlines the five phases of development, and includes a self-screening guide to help organizations evaluate whether their site could be a good fit for the Resilience Hub model.
Community Organizations Leading the Way
Two of our local leaders in Clark County have already started their journey to becoming Resilience Hubs. Working closely with United Way of Southern Nevada, Kristin Baja with Embodied Ecosystems, and Clark County, Dr. Mary House and Pastor Dewayne McCoy are actively working to build up their facilities and programming to better support the needs of their communities.
The After Market, founded by Pastor McCoy, is a local grocery store in Northeast Las Vegas providing food access in a food desert. The After Market is already well on their way in providing resources for their community including food programming and after school programming, and Pastor McCoy is now looking to build up his facility to be better equipped to support his community.
CHR, Inc. is a faith-based, non-profit corporation for the caring, helping, and restoring of lives to the under and unemployed Additionally, they support the victims of domestic & sexual violence who are challenged with poor credit, homelessness, and minimal job skills or education to build the confidence to break these barriers. Having also recently conducted a Resilience Hub Community Needs Assessment, Dr. House has been working to identify the priority needs for their facility and programming such as a commercial kitchen, battery backup storage, and a full-time staff.
The work of leaders like Pastor McCoy and Dr. House shows what’s possible when trusted organizations are empowered with the tools, guidance, and support to expand their role in community resilience. As more organizations begin to explore the model and tap into the resources provided by the new guide, Clark County is poised to grow a network of Resilience Hubs that reflect the diversity, strength, and ingenuity of our communities. Together, we can ensure that every resident has a safe place to turn in times of crisis and everyday life.
