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Jan 2026: community resilience

Each month, we break down our topic into four weekly modules. Catch up on previous editions here.​

This week's module: ACT

• ✅ CONNECT | Dream about the future of communities​
• ✅ LEARN | How do we build community resilience locally and globally?​
• 🎯 ACT | What is your pathway to community resilience as a neighbor and human?
• REFLECT | Art, poetry, and commitments

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Here's what we'll learn today Reader

Two toilet humor subject lines in a row? I don't know what's gotten into me. I guess when we're talking about resilience and emergencies and disasters, there really is a lot of talk about what comes out the other end. 💩

Anyway. Today's Changeletter continues to build on our January theme of community resilience by giving you a more in-depth picture of what you can do RIGHT NOW to prepare yourself, your family, and your neighbors.

You might know a lot of this information. But if you're like me, you haven't taken any action even though you're aware that a disaster can and will strike.

This is your sign to DO IT.

If you don't do the actions right now, before you leave this email, at least make yourself a calendar invite for when you have time to prepare.

Thanks for joining me in taking action towards community resilience starting with your household! 👇

Here's to another week of ✨the horrors persist and so do we✨ and we can persist more the better prepared we are.

Onward!

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Your bite-sized action plan Reader

✅ ACT on personal, household, neighborhood, and systemic community resilience

1. Make or buy your emergency kit. This should include ~14 gallons of water per person, non-perishable food that can sustain you for ~3 weeks, a headlamp, batteries, and more. Here's a list from the Red Cross. There are also pre-made ones for various emergencies like earthquakes. Remember, you don't have to get it all at once. It can be overwhelming.
2. Scan your important documents. Birth certificate, passport, mortgage, etc. anything that proves you are who you are, and 1) have a copy on the cloud, 2) put one in a flash drive in your emergency kit, and 3) send one to a point of contact that will not be geographically impacted by this disaster.
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3. GET TWO BUCKETS. We have "toilet blindness" in disaster planning, i.e. we forget about one of the most important and dangerous risk factors: 💩 poop! Don't prepare for an emergency only to die of cholera because you accidentally contaminated your water supply. Learn about how to set up a (very straightforward) emergency sanitation system and then DO IT.​
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4. Set up a communication plan with your household and community. Go through the disasters that are most likely to affect you. These can be climate/natural disasters like wildfires and floods, but they can also be directly-human caused disasters like police raids. Make a plan for how you're going to communicate when a disaster happens, who is going to be a central point of contact, where you might gather if you're able to, etc. and remember: communication lines might be down.​
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5. Go to an emergency preparedness training in your community. Many cities and municipalities around the world have these for FREE, either through the local government or through NGOs.
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6. Donate to World Central Kitchen. WCK serves meals to communities impacted by disaster (including war). They've been a great source of inspiration on how we can all step up even without government power (or with active government meddling).
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7. Get involved with your mutual aid networks. You can literally search "mutual aid + [wherever you live]" and find results. In the United States, you can search "whistle kits + [wherever you live]" since a lot of mutual aid networks are responding to ICE officers invading their communities via a whistle system.
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8. If you didn't do any of this stuff right now, make yourself a calendar invite for the future. Do it now. Do it do it do it do it. It's way too easy to put this stuff off.

If you're in the US and you want to get involved in longer term actions that make polluters pay for damages they've caused, and using that money to create climate resilience funding, check out Make Polluters Pay.​

Okay! Those are some hefty actions. And remember, if you're like ooohhh I don't need this, I'm so prepared yahoo, CHECK IN ON YOUR NEIGHBORS.

That's it for me. Now I'm off to acquire some buckets.

Love,

Nivi

Upcoming Soapbox events

We have WEEKLY events in Seattle AND in Portland! Both are on Tuesday evenings, same time, same place.
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​Our entire events calendar for ALL locations + virtual can be found here.