Leadership, through the use of champions, is often a process of facilitating the movement of people toward goals that they already hold, like economic recovery, but have not been able to articulate or make concrete and achievable. The participants at the Forum pointed out that the goal of cooperation among community leaders for purposes of economic sustainability should be familiar and welcome to most people. However, many people continue to be unaware of the tremendous value in loss prevention strategies, or believe they lack the means to reach the goal. Participation in public-private partnerships works to ensure that business organizations will continue to have customers and suppliers when natural disasters impact community life. Though the partnerships are not yet a common feature of the disaster response, recovery and mitigation landscape, events like this Forum will help make them more common.
Much work remains before disaster resistance and economic sustainability become public values.
Developing a common language and conceptual understanding of mitigation, response and recovery will allow us to begin shaping the strategies for professional and community education and communication that will foster the necessary societal leadership. The Forum participants noted that public and private sector lifeline organizations need to leverage their community leadership positions in support of these goals. A consensus in the meeting identified a need to initiate team relationships across traditional private-public sector barriers. Above all, it was highlighted during the Forum that we need to take the action step of opening dialogues within each business community toward forming the necessary alliances. There is a lot being learned about what works in places such as Evansville, Indiana, Rye, New York, Memphis, Tennessee and Deerfield Beach, Florida.