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Resilient Virginia Collaborative Alliance

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Resilient Virginia Collaborative Alliance

Home » Programs » Resilient Virginia Collaborative Alliance
Resilient Virginia Collaborative Alliance

Resilience Challenge

To date, extensive resiliency planning and projects have been limited to the coastal region of our Commonwealth, while central and southwest regions are typically under-resourced. Rural communities face increasing threats from extreme weather events and unpredictable climate patterns that exacerbate existing economic, environmental, health, and other social stresses. It is critical to identify, address, and prepare for these risks and challenges to survive, thrive, and become more resilient.

Resilience Solution

The Resilient Virginia Collaborative Alliance is an effective and powerful means to build capacity to address climate impacts in Central and Southwest Virginia. A collaborative alliance is simply the aggregation of cross-regional stakeholders for a common cause. Intentional, well-organized collaboratives help alleviate the strain of limited local government capacity, finite financial resources, and technical insufficiencies. Such an alliance will strengthen capacity and expedite productive, measurable outcomes.

Why Resilient Virginia?

Since 2014, Resilient Virginia has been a nonpartisan organization facilitating relationships between government, nonprofit, business, community, academia, and private sector entities to accelerate resiliency planning. Serving as the backbone organization for the RVCA, Resilient Virginia will unite these sectors to define priorities, share resources and tools, and streamline the process of resiliency planning and project funding in Central and Southwest Virginia.

Why You?

As a community leader in the Commonwealth, you are in a prime position to be an effective partner and change-maker with the RVCA. We envision the collaborative to be a platform where multidisciplinary sectors come together to share ideas and discuss best practices to address climate impact, ultimately resulting in a roadmap for regional climate resilience in the Central and Southwest part of the state. 

Through the Collaborative Alliance, Resilient Virginia will formalize and expand the synergies we have developed and bring the benefits of collaborations to communities working on resiliency planning in Central and Southwest Virginia. The RVCA will build regional capacity to address equity, economic, social, and climate challenges; create a roadmap for regional climate resilience; and integrate climate mitigation and adaptation strategies to address challenges and take advantage of opportunities. We will particularly work to address gaps in services to small, rural, non-coastal, and disadvantaged communities that lack the staff and funding to initiate climate resilience research and planning. The Planning District Commissions which will be the focus of the RVCA are shown below.

Structure of the Resilient Virginia Collaborative Alliance

Resilient Virginia

As the RVCA backbone organization, Resilient Virginia will:

1. Establish a common vision and strategic direction

2. Guide data collection, analysis and reporting

3. Support aligned activities that educate and motivate

4. Facilitate working group formation based on expressed priorities

5. Build public capacity to understand challenges

6. Advance policy to facilitate solutions

7. Mobilize funding for localities

Collaborative Alliance Core Steering Committee

The Core Steering Committee will:

1. Partner with RVCA through member and sponsorship opportunities

2. Identify the most beneficial direction for the collaborative

3. Delineate action plans through focused working groups

Collaborative Alliance Working Groups

Working Groups will:

1. Spotlight top-priority issues such as energy, flooding, transportation or job creation

2. Participate in idea sharing and peer exchange

3. Build local capacity for climate solutions

The Resilient Virginia Collaborative Alliance will result in Collective Impact.

Fall 2023 Activities

With the support of the Institute for Sustainable Communities we are embarking on the launch of the Resilient Virginia Collaborative Alliance for Central and Southwest Virginia. This fall, we are formally inviting representatives from government, nonprofit, academia, and business to be part of our Core Steering Committee who will set initial goals, develop the governance structure, and form initial working groups to address priority resilience needs in this region.

Winter 2024 Activities

We now have a dedicated group of cross-sector representatives on our Core Steering Committee. We are meeting monthly to develop and refine the vision, mission, goals, and strategic framework of the collaborative. These will be published by the end of February.

We are also actively seeking Funding Partners to reach our goal for the soft launch of the collaborative. Marion Enterprises joined as a Funding Partner in December and a donor has pledged to match up to $25,000 in funding we receive between January and April 2024. You can help us tap into this funding opportunity by becoming a funding partner! Please don’t wait… the donor’s offer ends at the end of April.

Spring 2024 Activities

The first two Working Groups are having their initial meetings in April. All groups are meeting virtually and anyone is welcome to attend (let us know if you’d like the zoom link).

Water Infrastructure
Denise Nelson, Director of Resilience and Grants at Launch! Consulting, will lead this group.
Meeting Date: April 19th at noon

Clean Transportation
Alleyn Harned, Executive Director of Virginia Clean Cities, will lead this group.
Meeting Date: April 22nd at 1pm

In May, we are hosting a Climate Equity Listening Session with people working on environmental justice around the state to hear how the RVCA can best support their programs and how we can integrate environmental justice into the work that we do.

We are in the beginning stages of planning a Regional Priority Setting Meeting to be held September 2024. Stay tuned for more information.

We are continuing to recruit Funding Partners to receive the $25,000 from a donor pledge match and reach our goal for the soft launch of the collaborative. You can help us tap into this funding opportunity by becoming a funding partner! Please don’t wait… the donor’s offer ends in May.

Thank You to Our Funding Partners

RVCA Sustainer

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