Armchair discussion among city and county judges, including Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez, Edinburg Mayor Ramiro Garza, Harlingen Mayor Norma Sepulveda, and Texas Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa.
The Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute (TEPHI) co-hosted the inaugural Center for Community Resilience Research Innovation and Advocacy (CCRRIA) Resilience Conference titled “Exploring Local Community Resilience Imaginaries” on Nov. 27-28 with our partners at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) in Edinburg. Attended by about 200 individuals, the conference provided an opportunity for them to learn how communities are able to adapt and recover from a disaster or public health emergency, such as climate hazards, social unrest or a pandemic, and then take this knowledge to implement within their own community.
Several pre-conference workshops and events began on Nov. 27, including a Presidents’ Roundtable Discussion that focused on “The Role of Universities in the Search for Community Resilience” and an evening reception with a performance by the nationally award-winning UTRGV Mariachi Aztlán, and Ballet Folklórico.
Rosalia Guerrero, program director of TEPHI’s Vulnerable Populations initiative, kicked off the full conference on Nov. 28 with welcome remarks followed by a keynote with Arturo Massol, PhD, executive director of Puerto Rico-based Casa Pueblo. The title of his discussion was “Casa Pueblo: A Community Model of Self-Decolonization for Social Well-Being and Climate Adaptation.” Three morning breakout sessions were held afterward with local organizations Voces Unidas, Proyecto Azteca, and Arise Adelante.
During the luncheon, Irasema Coronado, PhD, director and professor of the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University, delivered a keynote address titled “Resilience Beyond Borders: Nurturing Sustainable Futures in Transboundary Contexts.” The afternoon continued with three breakout sessions that examined community resilience from an academia, advocacy, and first responder/emergency management perspective.
A highlight of the conference was an armchair discussion among city and county judges, including Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez, Edinburg Mayor Ramiro Garza, Harlingen Mayor Norma Sepulveda, and Texas Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa. Overall, the conference included 41 presenters, three pre-conference workshops, six concurrent sessions, two keynotes, and two plenary sessions.
The TEPHI Center for Community Resilience Research Innovation and Advocacy (CCRRIA) is an Organized Research Unit under the Department of Public Affairs and Security Studies in the College of Liberal Arts at UTRGV in collaboration with UTRGV’s Department of Sociology and the Texas Epidemic and Public Health Institute. We are a Transboundary convergence platform (TCP) connecting and sharing the university’s resilience related knowledge with our most vulnerable populations in the RGV, and simultaneously learning from their wisdom and experiences. The concept of the CCRRIA emerged from the creation of the RISE Network at the 2019 RISE Conference, held at the University of Albany (SUNY). Since then, it has been searching for a better understanding of the role that universities play in pre and post disaster environments.