September 9^th, 2021, the Regional Resilience Collaborative (RRC) hosted the Regional Recovery Summit, which featured discussions with disaster recovery experts from across North Carolina and the United States. Representatives from state, local and federal government and nonprofit organizations shared their experiences, addressing the many challenges of rebuilding sustainable and equitable communities following large-scale disasters.

October 12^th, 2021, the RRC held Workshop II with the 9-county Emergency Management leads, which introduced and discussed the following Pre- Disaster Recovery tools: the Centralina Local Leader Disaster Recovery Guide, Pre- Disaster Recovery Plan Template, and the Pre- Disaster Recovery Plan Development Guide. The Pre- Disaster Recovery tools provide a place to start with Pre- Disaster Recovery planning and stakeholder engagement. Specifically, the Centralina Local Leader Disaster Recovery Guide supports the work of the recovery planning team serving as a touchstone to engage local government and elected officials, recovery support committees, whole community stakeholders and community engagement members in developing the local recovery plan. The Pre- Disaster Recovery Plan Development Guide serves as a plan development checklist, while the Pre- Disaster Recovery Plan template provides an out of the box recovery plan customizable to the recovery planning team’s needs. These two items are designed to be used in tandem when creating a recovery plan.

What we learned from Workshop II- collaboration includes all recovery planning partners, Emergency Management owns the plan while County/ City management owns the recovery. Leveraging the Pre- Disaster Recovery tools provides our region a strategic advantage and opportunity to bolster both a regionally coordinated and resilient approach to recovery planning.