Proactive companies are recognising the strategic relevance of community resilience to their short- and long-term success. Community resilience is a positive dynamic between social, economic, and ecological systems that ensures community wellbeing and effective responses to shocks and disruptions, such as fires, droughts, or economic crises. Yet, enhancing community resilience is a complex undertaking given that it involves a host of inter-related system elements, all of which implicate diverse role-players. To respond to this complexity, proactive companies are establishing innovative partnerships with local governments and other role-players to pursue shared resilience objectives. When contemplating partnering for community resilience, important questions emerge for managers. For instance, how should you determine the scope of your involvement; how do you identify partners; and how can you, as the corporate partner, best contribute?

To support you in these efforts, this guide shares four in-depth case studies of companies engaging in partnerships for community resilience in South Africa:

• The community partnerships by Santam, a short-term insurer, focused on risk reduction in the Eden District (Western Cape Province) and the Ehlanzeni District (Mpumalanga Province);
• The water stewardship efforts of Woolworths, a food and clothing retailer, in the Ceres area in the Western Cape Province;
• The local economic development efforts of AngloGold Ashanti, a gold mining company, in eMalangeni District in the Eastern Cape Province; and
• The town restoration efforts of Nedbank, a retail bank, in Magaliesburg in Gauteng Province.

In this guide, we distil the key lessons from these case studies for corporate managers who are planning or implementing partnerships for community resilience. We expect these lessons to be useful for other participants in such partnerships, too.