The Young Foundation has been commissioned by the Barrow Cadbury Trust to explore community resilience - a community's ability to withstand shocks and fulfil potential - and the factors that influence it.

Our research hopes to uncover the role local organisations play in encouraging resilience as well as the ways in which diversity within a community creates resilience. The aim of the project is to uncover the factors that affect a community's ability to tap into wider networks that both allow individuals to maximise their own potential and communities to be economically, socially and culturally vibrant.

We will look at how local institutions influence the ability of communities to be resilient in the face of adversity and identify assets and enabling factors. Investigating the resilience of UK communities is new. There is a limited empirical understanding of what resilience is and why different groups in different areas are more resilient than other - this research will go some way to fill this gap. The work will involve fieldwork in the Nechells and Shard End areas in Birmingham.