Are you seeing the impacts of the global climate crisis in your organizations or communities? Does your community have methods in place that can prevent and heal the widespread distresses and traumas that can result from the impacts?
This roundtable dialogue expanded on awareness of the importance, methods, and many benefits of community-based initiatives that build individual and collective social, psychological, emotional, and behavioral wellness and resilience for the impacts of the global climate crisis and other adversities. It also emphasized the need to integrate efforts to address social isolation and loneliness, ACEs, and other behavioral health problems into these community initiatives.
Speakers:
Bob Doppelt | International Transformational Resilience Coalition (ITRC)
Mebane Boyd | Resilient Communities Officer, North Carolina Healthy and Resilient Communities Initiative
Becky Turner | Director of Community Engagement, Community Resilience Initiative (Walla Walla WA)
Speakers
Bob Doppelt founded and coordinates the International Transformational Resilience Coalition (ITRC), a network of mental health, social service, disaster management, climate, and faith organizations and professionals. He is trained in both counseling psychology and environmental science and has combined the two fields throughout his career. He is also a Graduate of the International Program on the Management of Sustainability, in Ziest, The Netherlands, and a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Instructor. He is also a former Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. Early in his career Bob worked as a counselor with troubled youth and their families. Decades later he directed the Climate Leadership Initiative at the University of Oregon, a climate change research and technical assistance program that was one of the first in the U.S. to assist private, non-profit, and public entities to develop climate mitigation and adaptation plans. For many years he also taught systems thinking at the UO. Through this work Bob realized that the mental health and psychosocial impacts of the climate crisis were a very significant but largely unaddressed problem. This led him in 2013 to organize the ITRC. Due to his many years of work, in 2015 Bob was named one the world’s “50 Most Talented Social Innovators” by the World CRS Congress. Bob is the author of a number of books on the interface between individual, group, community, and social resilience and ecological regeneration. His newest book is Preventing and Healing Climate Traumas: A Guide for Building Resilience and Hope in Communities (Taylor and Francis/Routledge Publishing, March 2023).
Mebane Boyd served for over 20 years in a variety of leadership roles in non-profit organizations in Wilmington NC such as the Domestic Violence Shelter, the Children’s Museum and Smart Start of New Hanover County. She was tapped to lead the New Hanover Resiliency Task Force in 2018 which brought together over 100 organizations and more than 600 individuals to reduce ACEs and build a compassionate community. Following Hurricane Florence, Mebane was selected to be the community champion for New Hanover County for its work with the National Center for Disaster Preparedness to ensure that children’s unique needs are considered in disaster planning. Since April 2021, she has filled the role of the Resilient Communities Officer at the NC Partnership for Children, learning from and building the capacities of the numerous multi-sector community coalitions across the state to build trauma-informed, healing-centered communities.
Mebane is married to her husband of 37 years and has two adult children. In her free time, she enjoys reading, walks on the beach, puzzling and playing mah jongg.
Becky Turner (she/her) joined the CRI team as Director of Community Engagement in September 2022. A homegrown Walla Walla Valley resident, Becky has worked as a public school teacher and in the local nonprofit sphere. A former Executive Director of a reentry-based nonprofit, she and her team provided human services to people after incarceration. Becky is also an active volunteer in the community of Walla Walla, and a member of the local Reach Out coalition to prevent suicide. Eager to put her first-hand knowledge of the community to good use, Becky looks forward to bringing CRI’s trauma-informed and resilience-focused training to all sectors of the Walla Walla Valley. When she’s not working on making connections in the community, Becky enjoys gardening and having weekly Sunday dinners with her extended family, where she is the assigned dessert maker.
