Religious leaders play a critical role in promoting community resilience. During challenges faced by communities such as disasters, emergencies, conflict and crisis, religious leaders, religious communities, and religious organizations, not only help communities to cope with them, but also to bounce back to normalcy. Further, religious leaders could shape the way communities perceive challenges and change.

The Pillars of Resilience Project funded by the Small & Mighty Grants Program of The U.S. Embassy Colombo, administered through Sarvodaya, implemented by Resilience Research, Training and Consulting in collaboration with the Disaster Preparedness and Response Division of the Ministry of Health and the Disaster Management Center of the Ministry of Disaster Management is aimed at building the capacity of religious leaders on Community Resilience.

Under this project, we were able to train 207 religious leaders from all major faiths of Sri Lanka at six locations through one-day workshops. This symposium book is produced with contributions from guest writers as well as participants who completed the Pillars of Resilience training to be shared during the Interreligious Symposium on Community Resilience on 22.08.2019 in the Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute in Colombo. The contributions of the Buddhist and Pali University of Sri Lanka in organizing this symposium as well as publishing this Symposium Proceedings is greatly appreciated. We would also like to thank all the writers for their valuable contributions.