The Hay Community Resilience Initiative is empowering and supporting the people of Hay-on-Wye to address socio-economic issues, reduce their carbon footprint as well as increase their resilience and mental wellbeing in the face of an unstable future.

Hay Community Resilience Initiative: The Model

The model uses the new public library service in Powys to run Community Assemblies which are facilitated discussions and a form of deliberative democracy. As part of the process people come together to address issues and make collective decisions about solutions.

Our approach is replicable and adaptable. Keep reading for an overview. For a more comprehensive understanding we've put together this guide on 'How to Replicate this Community Resilience Model'. See the video of Mike talking through the model at the beginning of the Energy Assembly (January, 2025).

Getting started

After numerous discussions with friends, neighbours and other members of his local community, Mike Eccles, realised that he was onto something. There appeared to be a great appetite amongst the residents of Hay-on-Wye to take proactive action to address some of the issues threatening their quality of life and that of the next generations. And so, the idea for the Hay Community Resilience Initiative was born and the three pillars of Food, Energy and Wellbeing along with their overall objectives were established based on these early discussions.

The Hay Community Resilience Initiative began more structured community engagement in January 2024 when the first Community Assembly on Food was held. This signified the launch of the Food Pillar and the official launch of the whole project. Community Assemblies were chosen as the method for more official community engagement as they are rooted in equality, transparency and offer a legitimate mechanism for grassroots democracy.

Watch this short video of Cllr Sian Cox introducing the concept of Community Assemblies, explaining why we are using them, and offering an overview of how they work in practice.

The first Community Assembly on Food was well received and the event was oversubscribed. Around 80 local people attended and took part in the discussion on the day and there were 40 more people on a reserve list. Citizens of Hay-on-Wye discussed the key objective of the Food Pillar and created a strategy setting 5 Action Points for the Food Pillar towards its long-term goal.

Gaining traction and finding funding

The Food Assembly was run entirely by volunteers and although highly successful, it was unsustainable energetically and financially. It did however, demonstrate that the idea had gained enough traction to secure funding. This funding was used to hire a professional person to take on project coordination and to work alongside the Director, Mike Eccles, to develop the idea and drive the project forward. Heulyn Greenslade joined the team in November 2024 and things have been full steam ahead since then.

2025 has been non-stop! The National Lottery's Sustainable Steps Wales - Egin Grant funded the Hay Community Resilience Initiative until the end of July, 2025. In that time we organised and delivered two more well attended Community Assemblies and 5 strategic Action Points have now been decided for both the Energy Pillar and the Wellbeing Pillar. This is a big milestone signifying the successful launch of the whole Community Resilience Initiative.

This year we have also spent time fostering and nurturing new relationships with key stakeholders in the agroecological food sector, the community energy sector and the wellbeing sector. These relationships will be vital to the long-term success of the Hay Community Resilience Initiative.

We are thrilled to have received more grant funding from the National Lottery's Awards for All programme which has enabled the smooth continuation of the project and should tide us over until February, 2026. We have a lot of work to do over the next six months and we have a plan in place.

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