Paulette Aniskoff, Director Individual and Community Preparedness Division, FEMA
She has a community organizer background.
The challenge of new ideas vs. experience. How do you achieve a societal change on a small budget. The community needs to be integrated with the rest of the emergency management effort. They are trying to collaborate across all the FEMA divisions to get them to engage with "the community." This is not just about FEMA or states. In reality Whole Community is a cost savings measure. it is the way to go with declining resources across the board. FEMA recognizes this The shared responsibility is the key. Citizen Corps is one small effort [and a barely funded federal program].
There are some targeted goals [Not all were captured in my note taking]:
Youth--role in delivering the preparedness message They are trying to coordinate with the Red Cross and others to bring more of a common message.
Looking at Teen CERT and Campus CERT
Co-host "implementing Youth Emergency Preparedness in Your organization
Non-traditional partners.
Work with leaders from under served communities to tailor messaging to be more accessible and in line with the needs of various communities.
-2-3 hour modular individual and family preparedness training
-Exercises and drills for organizations and the public
-Kit on a budget
-Leverage existing local networks to distribute new programs and tools for engaging constituencies. A comment was made about needing non-techie approaches.
[I think that one major way to reach under served communities is with mobile technology, applications and the like. While lower income people might not have PCs and laptops, they all have cell phones and smart phones are now dominating that market. It is a cheap way to connect with people where they are. We can't rely on mobile access to our old style Internet sites. We need dedicated mobile tools that reach out to people who are on the go.]
People turn to their family first for disaster preparedness information,
Benchmarks and Metrics--Resilience measures for organizations and local programs and program effectiveness
-Maintain two-way communication with stakeholders to tell the national story on community preparedness.
-Analyze Citizen Corps Council and CERT Registration data points to determine what guidance and new tools are necessary to engage the whole community in planning and preparedness
-Create a distribution, tracking, and evaluation process for the 2-3 hour modular individual and family preparedness training
-Establish benchmarks for youth preparedness programs
-Work with Regions, States, Territories, urban Areas, tribes
Co-host workshops for faith-based and other community organizations using the 2-3 hour modular individual family preparedness
Anticipate a new roll-out of the www.ready.gov website this fall.