Designing Connection and Resilience

After Hurricane Helene

Communities across the U.S. are building strategies for climate resilience. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the PODER Emma community invited OAC to facilitate a series of community engagements to inform climate resilient infrastructure across their network of two commercially owned properties and several mobile home parks.

Open Architecture Collaborative designed and facilitated a series of engagements for over 100 residents, stewards, and workers who keep PODER Emma’s cooperative ecosystem thriving. Their responses have shaped practices for communally stewarded land across the network to create space for strengthening connections with one another and build climate resiliency.

OAC worked with consultants from our network to design and facilitate (1) a series of digital and in-person engagement sessions, and (2) a roadmap for each community’s development projects. Our team included Garrett Jacobs, Almas Haider, Brandi Mack, and Diana Ariza.

We began with designing an engagement strategy with PODER Emma leadership that offered multiple ways to engage co-operative members, be culturally responsive, mutli-lingual, and provided opportunities to hire within the community. It included:

  • Virtual Meeting with PODER Emma Leadership: meeting with co-op presidents to share draft of engagement, receive feedback, map existing conversations, and potential challenges unique to their community.

  • Virtual Survey: a Spanish and English survey of resident’s needs, and priorities from the engagement process. Concerns, etc. 80% of resident’s responses were recorded, thanks to the PE team for doorknocking at each site.

  • Dinner with PODER Emma Leadership: Gathered over a meal to meet the team in person, report back on the survey, walkthrough the activities for each engagement, and play a loteria inspired reflection activity.

  • Community Specific Engagements: Shared a meal while creating individual and collective collages around themes of community and regeneration. We then dove into site plans to define spatial interventions and structures to support connection as well as sustainable and cultural land management practices. 

Over six months, we held virtual and in-person engagements that prioritized accessibility, comfort, and cultural relevance:

  • Skills and subject matter expertise for PODER Emma including fluency in Spanish, familiarity with co-operative land ownership, permaculture specialists, and community organizers.

  • Live-translation for all engagements as residents are most comfortable speaking and sharing feedback in Spanish. 

  • Identified spatial interventions and components for the communal spaces through collaging activities, inspired by , a traditional Mexican board game Lotería.

  • Supported a local business with a hand crafted catered meal from a PODER Emma community member.