We designed the toolkit for an audience of our peers—those working with, and at the intersection of, science and community. Specifically, our toolkit and work is designed for extension educators with Cooperative or Sea Grant Extension, climate adaptation practitioners, and/or professionals who support or lead projects relating to the intersection of climate change and community resilience. If you are not part of this audience, but have found your way to our toolkit, welcome! We still hope you will find the information ahead useful and valuable in your work engaging communities.

The goal of this Google Site and the toolkit at-large is to expand equitable community-climate resilience practices to other Great Lakes communities and beyond. We do this by openly sharing our One Block at a Time projects, process, and lessons learned so you can learn from our practice and gain ideas and resources to consider in your own work. We invite you to join us in the practice of equitable community engagement and adapt our framework to your own community and projects.

We recommend you review the three sections of the toolkit in the following order: background assessment, community visioning, then implementation. Each section will provide you with an overview of the stage of the work and its importance, specific examples from our projects, and lists of guiding questions and considerations for you to incorporate as you approach your work in your own community and neighborhood. These three stages are meant to be worked through sequentially, and they build on one another, so it is important to not skip sections. Just like you wouldn’t start baking a birthday cake for your friend without knowing their birth date or favorite flavor, projects in community should not begin without understanding key considerations and perspectives of neighbors. 

While reading through the toolkit will not take much time, do not expect the actual phases of the work to be completed quickly. The One Block project was completed over the course of two years and built upon many years of community-relationship and partnership building before the project began. Relationships and partnerships are key for community work and we encourage you to focus on the process of engagement rather than final project outcome(s). Trusted relationships will take time to build especially if you or your organization is new to a community.