Coastal resilience begins with listening. In Bayou La Batre and the surrounding communities of South Mobile County, Alabama, listening became the foundation for trust and collaboration. Through the Program for Local Adaptation to Changing Environments (PLACE), our team partnered early and often with local organizations to understand how residents experience and respond to flooding, sea-level rise, and other environmental stressors. Together, we built relationships that centered community priorities while connecting local knowledge with scientific understanding to guide practical, place-based resilience actions. 

With support from Mississippi-Alabama Sea, these partnerships led to a series of community dialogues and a culminating action event focused on flooding solutions. Residents identified areas of concern, explored strategies, and co-designed a rain barrel education and giveaway event at the Cambodian Temple, a site of deep cultural importance. The event provided 65 collapsible rain barrels and bilingual educational materials in English and Khmer, demonstrating how culturally grounded, small-scale actions can spark broader momentum toward resilience. 

Through these dialogues, community members also expressed interest in longer-term solutions, such as developing resilience hubs, exploring nature-based strategies to reduce flooding, and addressing public health challenges linked to climate impacts. However, many of these goals remain aspirational due to the community’s limited capacity and readiness to pursue large-scale funding. Building on this foundation, PLACE and its partners are now working to bridge these gaps by connecting efforts in South Mobile County with those in East Biloxi and coastal Louisiana through a regional, cohort-based community resilience program. By strengthening peer networks, expanding training opportunities, and supporting readiness for future grants, this next phase aims to empower community members to lead resilience planning from within, turning shared knowledge and trust into long-term, adaptive capacity across the Gulf Coast.