By Kelline Linton, Staff Writer
A new questionnaire is coming to Abilene soon, one that is uniquely formatted for the Abilene community.
Connecting Caring Communities (CCC), an Abilene nonprofit organization that works to strengthen the city’s relationships and foundations, is implementing the Community Assessment of Resiliency Tool (CART) throughout Abilene during the first two to three weeks in October.
CART is a survey that measures connectedness between neighbors, access to resources like police, shelter and food and overall resiliency of a community. It is a clinical diagnosis that measures an individual city in four areas – connecting and caring, resources, critical reflection, skill building and transformative potential and disaster prevention.
Abilene is the first city in the nation to use CART as a tool for city-wide assessment, although it has been used with small groups in the past.
The Terrorism and Disaster Center (TDC) of the University of Oklahoma’s Health Sciences Center developed CART. The TDC was formed as a response to the Oklahoma City bombings and works to address how a community reacts to such crisis as school shootings, tornadoes or floods.
A community needs more than excellent first responders like firemen and police to remain healthy; it needs connectedness, caring and access to resources, said Brad Carter, executive director of Connecting Caring Communities.
“A community is healthy and more sustainable when people are connected to each other,” Carter said.
CART measures the relationships CCC is trying to build.
“What we’re trying to look at is how connected people feel that they are to resources in their community,” said Nancy Coburn, director of the Volunteer and Service-Learning Center. “Nothing else that we’ve done in Abilene has really looked at that particular aspect of meeting needs.”
The CCC is partnering with ACU, TDC, 2-1-1 A Call for Help, United Way of Abilene, Community Foundation of Abilene, Dyess Air Force Base, Hendrick Medical Center, Hardin-Simmons University’s Neighborhood Enhancement Center, Nonprofit Management Center the City of Abilene’s Office of Neighborhood Services and the Abilene Police Department to bring CART to Abilene.
“[The surveys] results are going to help all of us figure out what needs to happen in Abilene and help us measure where we are as far as resiliency goes,” Carter said. “A resilient community is one that is connected, where people care about each other and have access to the resources they need to live their life and respond to any kind of crisis situation.”
The 20-minute CART survey will be conducted through face-to-face interviews with 500 randomly chosen residents. Two hundred volunteers will interview in pairs for a total of three hours each.
The interview results will be compiled in two separate ways. One will look at Abilene as a whole, and the other will focus on 20-25 super neighborhoods individually.
“We will use the survey to access strengths and needs and assets,” Carter said.
The TDC is conducting the assessment survey for free; the Abilene community needs to only provide the volunteers and manpower.
Fifty seven volunteers trained last Saturday, but more interviewers are still needed. Anyone interested in volunteering should e-mail CCC at linda@wecareabilene. org, or contact Nancy Coburn at the Volunteer Service- Learning Center. Volunteers receive a free T-shirt, and ACU volunteers also can obtain five Chapel credits.
