The census data brought to light a serious issue for Santa Maria’s public safety personnel. “We realized many residents of the city did not have a grasp of basic emergency and disaster knowledge,” said Mark van de Kamp, management analyst in the Santa Maria City Manager’s Office. “Cultural and language barriers affected the city’s ability to educate the community about emergency preparedness. We also learned that some members of the Latino population did not trust first responders, typically because of bad experiences in other countries.”
Traditional outreach methods had not been effective. The city needed a new approach to help improve the relationship between first responders and the community.
A Culturally Appropriate Curriculum
In 2011, the city began collaborating with the Orfalea Foundation, a Southern California-based nonprofit that supports programs that promote healthy development and skills for success in learning and in life. The foundation had developed an initiative called Aware and Prepare to teach disaster readiness using an innovative, low-cost, grass-roots approach.
Santa Maria decided to adopt the Aware and Prepare initiative and customize it to meet the needs of Spanish-speaking groups. The new program, called Listos, which means “ready” in Spanish, emphasizes sharing preparedness skills and information with family members and friends.
“We knew that if it was city leaders delivering these messages, it wouldn’t resonate as well as people hearing it from their neighbor down the street or their family,” van de Kamp said. “We needed to engage community volunteers to help reinforce the messages.”
The Listos curriculum condenses the traditional Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) eight-week course into a four-week, 12-hour class using a culturally appropriate curriculum. After completing the training, volunteer instructors then go out into the community and conduct emergency preparedness training sessions.
During the training sessions, Listos staff explain the role of emergency responders and introduce fire department personnel to the community. Participants also learn how to use a fire extinguisher, make family communication and reunification plans, treat the injured and shut off utilities.
Training events take place not in city offices, but in various areas of the community, including churches, community centers and even residents’ driveways on occasion.
“Having classes at a time and place where people feel safe, where they have familiarity and where they have easy access at all times is very important,” van de Kamp said.
The events focus on getting participants involved and engaged rather than simply lecturing to them. Food also plays an important part in Listos.
“During a break halfway through class the participants and instructors share a potluck-style meal that encourages free-flowing discussion,” said Liliana Encinas, Listos program manager. “Food is an important aspect of our culture; it helps form trust and openness.”
Writing for the Audience
Listos also focuses on creating materials about emergency response to hand out in the community. But the materials are not just a translation of existing content.
“Many programs will take existing CERT materials written in English and simply translate them to the new language,” Encinas said. “But Listos materials and information are created specifically for the target audience. That’s what makes it unique. For native speakers, it makes a world of difference to get the information in their native language and written at a level they can understand.”
Tom Phelan, who consults on instructional programs for adults in emergency management nationally, said that’s an important component of the program. The main cultural barrier when it comes to emergency preparedness often isn’t language per se, but the reading level on which messages and websites are written.
“My research has found emergency management website homepages with reading grade levels from 9.6 to 25 — way above the reading levels of many citizens and immigrants we want to have the information in an emergency,” Phelan said. “If there is a barrier, it is lack of awareness of basic literacy information and how to write at a lower grade level.”
Listos materials also focus on straightforward messages that emphasize the importance of being prepared.
“The terminology we use in the Listos materials is basic and not overwhelming,” Encinas said. “We try to partner with organizations that already provide services to the Latino population so there is already a trust link, which helps really get the point across that we need to be prepared.”
Understanding the importance of community preparedness is critical given the city’s limited resources, van de Kamp said. “On any given day, fewer than two dozen city firefighters and police officers are working on a single shift,” he said. “Consequently, the city’s limited resources will be overwhelmed in a disaster if community members are unprepared. The Listos program helps us help the community understand that the city has finite resources, so residents have to take responsibility for their own well-being when a disaster strikes.”
Listos is now taught in communities throughout Santa Barbara County. And with the support of the California Emergency Management Agency and FEMA, the program is expanding to serve Latino populations statewide, though Encinas said funding has been a challenge.
For Santa Maria, van de Kamp said the Listos program has been very successful in helping emergency responders better connect with the Latino population. In 2014, Listos had 19 active volunteer instructors who put in more than 1,600 volunteer hours.
“You get that core number of people and then they tell others, and it keeps growing,” he said. “Word of mouth has been super important to the success of the program.”
“Listos is excellent, has great partners and is serving Spanish-speaking communities in California very well, especially with CERT training,” said Phelan. “Everyone benefits from emergency notifications and warnings when an incident is developing. So why not try to reach as many people as possible?”
