Our pilot phase, in Sinaloa, is an enormous success, securing the buy in of the local community. We presented the project in 2017 to GIZ in Berlin, ensuring their support to expand the #GIresilience project in other countries. We also established a methodology in order to assess resilience, and our project is based on participatory design, where the programmes and activities are designed in conjunction with the local community, and evaluated by the beneficiaries. We have also published two flagship reports highlighting existing community responses against organised crime; one from Mexico, and another from Africa.
Our vision is the creation of a global network connecting resilient actors of communities world wide. Community resilience can be identified as a community’s ability to respond to adversity, whilst retaining its functional capacities. We wanted to highlight the inspirational and impactful work undertaken by communities in arduous circumstances, and develop resilience-based initiatives in order to protect and empower citizens who have taken and continue to take a stand against organised crime. In the context of organised crime, the community resilience approach demands understanding how organised crime can become a part of a community’s culture, impacting people’s lives in more ways than might be immediately obvious. Through research driven workshops, dialogues, and participant feedback, the GI hopes to identify the vulnerabilities of communities, and highlight the factors that make communities resilient. Our ultimate vision is the establishment of a strong network, developed in conjunction with key resilience actors in Mexico, Central America, the Philippines and South Africa. We want to produce a sustainable model that will strengthen community resilience against organized crime and violence.