Reggie Hola, ACT organizer, joined great speakers and activists from across the country last week at the Pacific Islander Violence Prevention Summit 2018, The Resilience Continuum: Still Standing, to share his story of Resilience, Hope, and Redemption.
Resilience is often referred to as a ch
aracteristic trait rather than a complex process. Superficial impressions of resilience have left us with a monochromatic interpretation as the simple act of bouncing back. More dynamically, however, as a strategy for prevention, resilience reveals how communities bounce back from tragedy. Most importantly, resilience must be understood to espouse preventative properties.
Oceania possesses a venerable history of resiliency-withstanding a traumatic history of war, colonization, climate change, and poverty. As a resilient people, we are presently coping with the changing world by owning our participation in global events. Rooted in our ancestral DNA, we strategically employ ancient notions of preparation and planning to minimize potential devastation and damage to our infrastructures. Our ancestors' wisdom led them to prepare for natural disasters rather than foolishly trying to prevent the inevitability of them. We can follow their example by confronting and combating societal issues like gang and domestic violence which continuously impact our community.
Resiliency requires exercise and education to adapt to societal and environmental challenges while growing and sustaining performance, safeguarding people, achieving equity, and thriving. It activates positive, communicative skills and strategies with which individuals and community leverage their challenges, failures, and high-risk situations to strengthen roles in the home, workplace, and larger society. Our community must realize its innate capability for resilience and follow this new consciousness with a call-to-action for a reintegration of these skills.
