Have you made changes around your home to reduce risks from storms or flooding? Would you like to learn what others have tried or share your own experiences? 

At its recent community event, SanCap Resilience announced the launch of its new “Neighbor to Neighbor” program. The goal of the program is for residents to share resilience lessons learned since Hurricane Ian and publish them in an anthology for the entire community’s benefit.

Submit your own resilience practice examples.

“We’ve all begun to become experts in areas we never thought we would,” said Bob Moore, chair of SanCap Resilience. “There’s a lot of knowledge in our community on different aspects of resiliency and sustainability. People have been sharing their experiences informally through Facebook and other sites, and we want to capture all that valuable information.”

The Nov. 13 event at the Sanibel Community House featured homeowners discussing their experiences with elevating their homes to protect them from future flood events.

“It was a perfect example of how community members can help each other become more resilient to future storm events,” said Kip Buntrock, chair of the group’s Resilient Buildings Working Group. “We’d like to build on that and help people share the many different resilience practices they’ve been incorporating — both what’s worked and what hasn’t — so we don’t all have to reinvent the wheel.”

The group has developed an online form for people to submit their resilience practice examples (please address one topic per submission). Moore said SanCap Resilience is looking for details such as what was done, how it was done, how well it worked or didn’t, materials used, how they were sourced, and approximate costs. Individuals should only include improvements they believe are compliant with building codes. View sample submissions >>

“We hope to hear from as many people as possible,” said steering committee member Miriam Pepper. “People have taken a variety of actions to harden their homes against wind, make their homes more flood-resistant, improve their energy resilience and sustainability, plant more resilient landscapes…the list goes on and on. In early 2025, we’d like to take the reported resilience examples and use them to create a resiliency symposium where people can gather and exchange practical solutions. We’d also like to invite vendors so attendees can see examples of materials they may want to use for their future building and landscape improvements.”

For more information about SanCap Resilience, visit sancapresilience.org. You can also find SanCap Resilience on Facebook at facebook.com/groups/sancapresilience.