This brief focuses on three key lessons learned — the importance of social capital for resilience, leveraging social capital to establish community buy-in, and linking resilience activities to specific shocks. The USAID Reforestation project team applied this learning to implement a refined reforestation approach, which may be relevant to other projects incorporating components of resilience-building, sustainable landscape management, and reforestation. The purpose of this brief is to document these insights and their relevance for this and other projects moving forward.