Communities Prepared
Fostering community long-term resilience through free training and workshops
Learn more
What is Communities Prepared?
Communities Prepared is a National Lottery funded, Groundwork South led programme that provides people and communities with the knowledge and confidence to prepare for, respond to and recover from a range of emergencies and, in-turn, foster long-term resilience. Our vision is for all communities in the UK to be resilient to the impacts of climate change and other related challenges.
Our grassroots approach means that we engage directly with people at a community level, working together to strengthen both local and nation-wide resilience. We combine multi-hazard volunteer training, including flooding, storms, heatwaves, wildfires, utility failure and snow, with community development workshops on topics including community emergency planning. We deliver this through a series of live online sessions, but our content can also be tailored to the specific needs, risks and priorities of local communities.
As a programme run by Groundwork South, we want every community to be strong and able to shape its own destiny in an increasingly risk-filled future.
Thanks to funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, our offer is free to community volunteers and wider community members, and we are also regularly developing new collaborative projects with our partners, which include the Environment Agency, the British Red Cross and the VCS Emergencies Partnership.
These partnerships enable us to extend and customise our local offer through a variety of funding models and approaches.
Our website
Communities Prepared has its own website, www.communitiesprepared.org.uk, offering access to a range of resources, including events, self-led learning materials, guest blogs and community stories.
Our events page details all of our national and regional webinars and workshops alongside any upcoming conferences or shows we are part of. These span from online Zoom sessions to in-person conferences, with opportunities for people of all knowledge levels to get involved.
The London Community Resilience Toolkit
Communities Prepared have partnered with London Resilience to create the London Community Resilience Toolkit, designed to support London’s communities in getting started on their community resilience journey.
Our Community Resilience Toolkit will assist any Londoner thinking about building greater community resilience with identifying local resources, supporting volunteers and thinking about how you can use your community spaces. Its practical step-by-step design allows users to work through it at their own pace.
Partner with us
Communities Prepared aims to be open and flexible to the needs and risks of local communities. Previously, this has involved codeveloping content for specific regions, working strategically within the sector to promote self-activation within communities, signposting as part of a network of organisations, delivering council contracts, working with commercial partners and more. Whether you are an individual volunteer, group leader or professional, we want to work together to meet your needs, and are flexible with how we approach this goal. Please get in touch to find out more.
Our intention is to be open and flexible to the needs and risks of local communities. This has involved codeveloping content for specific regions, working strategically within the sector to promote self-activation within communities, signposting as part of a network of organisations, delivering council contracts, working with commercial partners and more. Whether you are an individual volunteer, group leader or professional, we want to work together to meet your needs, and are flexible with how we approach this goal.
Register with us
To best way understand and engage with our offer is to register with us. This is quick, free and gives any user (individual, group or professional) access to our self-led online learning modules, handbooks and online webinar discussions in our calendar. Your data will not be used anywhere else and you will never be asked for your payment details.
Interested? Head to our website at www.communitiesprepared.org.uk to learn more or contact us at communitiesprepared@groundwork.org.uk with any queries.
Connect with Communities Prepared:
X – Facebook – LinkedIn – Instagram – Bluesky
Thanks to The National Lottery Community Fund, Aviva, DLUHC and Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) for their support of this programme.
