Creating a Better Post-Covid19 World!

As I’ve watched the Covid19 Crisis evolve, I have been amazed by the lack of preparedness on the part of our Federal, State, County, and Local “Communities!” I bet you thought I was going to say governments. Well, governments are only part of our communities. If we begin at the very local level, and work our way out to the counties, states, and finally federal governments, we will see in each and every case, when we expect the government to handle each crisis as it comes along, we will find ourselves unprepared to handle any of them. The diagram above is a representation of a process that can be used on the local level, to help people create a viable and powerful system for dealing with everything that comes at them. Whether the problem is economic, public and/or individual physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual health, education and training, recreation, environment, housing, safety or the welfare of our people, a Community Development Process and System can prepare everyone for whatever challenges are faced. If we do this on a local level, and then the county and state levels, we will create a system that works for everyone. I will admit, this process being implemented at the federal level looks like a very daunting task and some states may not have the level of cooperation and collaboration needed to make it function smoothly, but we can very plainly see that failure to have such a system in place has cost us many thousands of lives and trillions of dollars as a nation.

Our response to Covid19 is a classic example of what happens when we do not take the time to learn how to cooperate and collaborate well in advance of the first inkling that a crisis might even arise. One of the hallmarks of American society has been how we respond to a crisis. We all band together and forget our differences and then we try to figure out what to do. This actually didn’t work too badly until we made our world smaller through mass transportation and mass communication. Now when everybody can come in contact with one another through planes and huge cruise ships and we can all communicate with the world with a few key strokes on a computer or thumb strokes on a smart phone, the old wait for something to happen strategy is just plain dumb. We are smarter than that. We can do better.

Back in 1999 I had the great pleasure of meeting Vaughn Grisham, who was the director of the McLean Institute for Public Service and Community Engagement at the University of Mississippi. Dr. Grisham was, and continues to be, an advocate for building more resilient communities through a systematic community development processes similar to the one outlined above in the graphic I’ve shared. When personal agendas are left behind and a common goal of “Creating the most inclusive, effective, and efficient community possible” is adopted, communities are transformed. When the community collaboration team has representation from governmental bodies, economic development councils, chambers of commerce, the healthcare/medical community, public health and mental health agencies, public and private preschool through grade 12 and post-secondary education, human service agencies, law enforcement, judiciary, agriculture, non-profits, racial and ethnic sub-populations, and faith-based organizations, everyone can contribute to the greater good of the community. Without this collaborative body, individual entities will create their own system for dealing with issues that arise. This invariably results in inefficiencies, duplication, waste, and some people being left out of the loop.

Although these collaborative bodies seem to be unwieldy, the alternative to having everyone working together from a common playbook is exactly what we have seen. Each interest group vies for decisions that favor their interest at the expense of other interest groups. When decisions are made based on only part of the entire picture, the result is, most often, harmful even to the interest group that has driven the thinking that led to the decision. Our lack of broad based and collaborative planning for events like Covid19 has impacted every aspect of our society. There is no group that has been unharmed by this crisis. The economy has taken a huge hit. Education has taken a big hit. Healthcare has taken a big hit. The military has taken a big hit. Agriculture has taken a big hit; many farmers don’t have workers to harvest their crops in Florida and California and other parts of the world and the market for milk products has plummeted with the closure of schools for millions upon millions of children. Transportation has taken a big hit. Communication systems have been overloaded and crashed. Minority populations have suffered huge losses in some communities. Governmental bodies, on all levels, will not come out of this unscathed! Preparedness requires that every angle be examined. That cannot happen if we are not inclusive of every organization and population that make up our communities.

Let’s make sure that the lessons being taught to us all by this Covid19 crisis are really learned. Let us not go back to business the way we conducted it prior to Covid19. Let us start really cooperating and collaborating with one another. Let us put our petty, personal agendas aside in favor of strategies and processes that say “we all matter.” The economy is not more important than the health and welfare of the people. For the economy to be robust and healthy, it requires a robust and healthy population. The economy and the welfare of all of us is not more important than our faith, whether that faith is in God or in the fellowship of man. For our health and welfare is dependent upon a viable and thriving economy and the connection between it all requires a good amount of faith. Let us build more resilient and responsible communities through collaborative economies codified through communities of faith.