Guest Blog: Community Resilience with Liam Ryan
19th May 2025
My name is Liam Ryan and I recently joined Cumbria CVS as the new Community Resilience Coordinator. I’m new to the role and am still getting to meet the partners and communities that I’ll be working with but have spent more than twenty years in community development roles across the north of England. My background is mostly health and social care related but I’m sure many would agree that Resilience wears many hats and that the heart of it lies in helping people and communities to support themselves and find solutions close to home.
It came as no surprise to me that the key issues affecting Cumbria have been identified as being flood, power outages and pandemic. My own community in the Eden Valley has been affected by four significant floods in the past 15 years and I’ve seen at first hand how local residents came together to support each other in the critical hours after the incident.
As someone who grew up in rural north Cumbria, power outages were almost routine during winter and I know how resilient communities can be in that situation. In the intervening years our society has become more reliant on power and technology and I see the challenge as being to support communities to plan and acquire the tools to ensure that no vulnerable person suffers unnecessarily when the lights go off.
Finally, during COVID I managed a telephone befriending service for people living with cancer and later worked on a mass volunteer deployment programme providing practical help and support for people isolated for health reasons. I’ve seen many great examples of the value that volunteers and communities can provide to vulnerable people both locally and beyond and I’m a great believer that when the need is there people will step up to help.
I see my role as being strongly community focused and centred around working with locals to plan for whatever comes their way. I also know that I’m in great company with Jozi Brown and other colleagues who work with communities in a similar way and am committed to working in partnership with everyone to find the best solutions. If anyone would like a chat I can be contacted at liam.ryan@cumbriacvs.org.uk or 07356156489.