Preparing communities to be unprepared

We envision a world where every crisis is met with people who act, improvise, and overcome together. Because disaster doesn’t wait for you to be prepared.

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Embrace the Challenge. Empower Resilience.

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On Sep 9, our founder and fearless leader, Susanne, will be plunging into the icy waters of the San Francisco Bay to swim the 1.6 miles across the Golden Gate, under the iconic Golden Gate Bridge! This is not only a personal challenge, it epitomizes the fortitude, determination and resilience needed to overcome disaster.

Help us to raise $8,448 — one dollar for every foot of the swim — to empower resilience and provide Susanne with moral support and encouragement.

Follow her preparations on our blog, on Facebook, or on Instagram.

READ Susanne’s latest updates →

Our mission

We spread the confidence, skills and mindsets that people need to act and work together in a crisis.

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What we do

We design live community learning experiences that combine crisis research, experiential education and disaster response to foster social resilience, and work with community organizations to get them to local communities.

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What we do

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Who we are

We are dedicated to helping communities to help themselves through science, learning, individual empowerment and fun. At the moment, we are small and mostly working in Northern California. With your help, we aim to grow into a nonprofit that helps communities around the world.

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In a nutshell

From fire to flood, pandemic to power outage, community crises increasingly affect everyday life. Official response systems strive to prepare and respond, but cannot be everywhere, instantly. Individuals and communities must be ready to help themselves.

Most people believe that being ready starts with functional resilience: having the knowledge of exactly what to do and a stockpile of supplies before a crisis happens.

We don’t.

We believe that being ready starts with social resilience: having the skills and mindsets needed to improvise with the people and resources at hand when a crisis happens.

We are developing a new approach to community training that strengthens social as well as functional resilience. Our learning experiences help individuals and communities prepare to be unprepared by providing them with opportunities to experience some of the chaos and confusion of a crisis, practice improvising, and discover what they can accomplish with the people and resources that happen to be available.

Individuals and communities recover from crisis faster and better when they help themselves. We envision a world where every community crisis is met with people who act, improvise, and overcome together. Because crisis doesn’t wait for them to be prepared.

See how it works

We’re working on

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Project

Wildfire readiness

Our main focus right now is on working with a few local communities to develop a new learning experience to help community members be ready to support each other in the face of a wildfire threat — from possible evacuation through return to partially damaged homes.

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Project

Research Roundtables

Understanding crisis, collective action, and improvised leadership draws on many scientific fields. We are leading a series of roundtable discussions that bring together diverse groups of researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas and share insights.