This week, the first booklets Prepare for an emergency are delivered to households. Under the motto Think Ahead, the government explains how to prepare for, for example, a major power outage, digital attack, or flooding. The booklet provides three steps: (1) assemble an emergency kit, (2) make an emergency plan, and (3) talk to each other and help each other.
It shows what people can do themselves and how they, together with neighbors, friends, and family, can bridge the first 72 hours of an emergency. This is important; we saw it during the corona crisis and more recently with residents around Utrecht who temporarily had no tap water due to pollution.
But a good start is not a complete preparation. True resilience goes further: it requires community spirit and social bonds that connect people across group boundaries, especially when a crisis lasts longer than those first 72 hours.
Research into crisis situations such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the earthquakes in Christchurch shows that community spirit is crucial for resilience. People who feel connected experience less uncertainty and are quicker to help each other. In the first days, close networks of family and neighbors are especially important. But over time, it helps if people have contact with others outside their own circle. If people from rich and poor communities remain connected during a crisis, society recovers faster. One brings resources, the other knowledge of what people really need.
Fortunately, the Netherlands has relatively high social cohesion. But unfortunately, we see that people are mainly willing to help others from their own group. The challenge: building community spirit across group boundaries.
Civic collectives can play an important role in this. Throughout the Netherlands, we see citizen initiatives around important social issues, for example poverty, loneliness, care, or energy. This week I visited the Participation Kitchen, an initiative in The Hague that brings people with different cultural backgrounds, rich and poor, together through meals. These kinds of citizen initiatives are close to the community and are used to improvising. They are places where people who normally live separately do meet and work together for social goals. Local governments could think ahead together with citizen initiatives by involving them already in the preparation for crisis situations with the question: what will we do together if a crisis occurs and how do we then mobilize the rest of the community? This is already happening in various places.
At the same time, people can also start precaution circles themselves, like those already existing around care. This simply means forming a network of people who can support each other in various ways. Preferably with people from different life worlds, also outside crisis times. Look at your childs football club, or make a call in the supermarket, your company, or the care center. And importantly: do not wait until a crisis breaks out to care for each other. Precisely by getting to know each other and practicing cooperation, the creativity and connection needed for resilience arise.
In short: truly thinking ahead goes beyond an emergency kit and an emergency plan. It means connecting to existing community strength and building meaningful networks that are less homogeneous than the bubbles we normally live in.
