CHILDREN AND DISASTERS NEWSLETTER
August 2013 – Issue 5
In the August issue of the Children and Disasters Newsletter, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) shares a recap of the Youth Preparedness Council (YPC) Summit. The Children and Disasters team also introduces new youth-related resources and opportunities from the Texas School Safety Center and the Girl Scouts of the USA. Continue reading to learn more!
FEMA YOUTH PREPAREDNESS COUNCIL (YPC) SUMMIT
FEMA’s YPC Summit was held June 23-24, 2013 in Washington, D.C. The Council supports FEMA’s commitment to involving youth in preparedness-related activities, and provides an avenue to engage the younger population, taking into account their perspectives, feedback, and opinions.
The two-day summit gave Council members the opportunity to meet with FEMA leadership, FEMA community preparedness staff, and several FEMA partner organizations to share their ideas about engaging youth in emergency preparedness. The summit also included professional growth activities for the members; the members attended a session on public speaking and interview skills, as well as a session on developing actionable emergency preparedness projects during their term on the Council. For their projects, some members are working to establish and promote Teen Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) programs in their communities, and others are creating more localized projects that are concerned with the specific disasters that affect their regions.
To learn more about FEMA’s youth preparedness efforts, please visit: www.ready.gov/youth-preparedness.
YOUTH PREPAREDNESS SPOTLIGHT: TEXAS SCHOOL SAFETY CENTER YOUTH PREPAREDNESS CAMP
The Texas School Safety Center (TxSSC) at Texas State University, San Marcos is a research center that serves as the central location for the dissemination of safety and security information for K-12 schools and junior colleges throughout the state of Texas. The TxSSC has developed a statewide youth summer camp that includes emergency response training, community-specific action planning, and leadership development. Through community-based action planning and relationship building with local/regional professional responders, participating youth are empowered to promote a culture of preparedness, train others, and ultimately further prepare their families, schools, and communities.
From June 24-28, 2013, five teams, consisting of 42 youth and five adult sponsors, attended the TxSSC’s five-day Youth Preparedness Camp at Schriener University in Kerrville, Texas. The five teams completed a 20-hour Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training and certification, developed community-specific action plans aimed at preparing their local communities, and acquired the leadership skills needed to address and sustain emergency preparedness. The training included fire safety, basic first aid, search and rescue, incident command system (ICS), disaster psychology, and other skills-based lessons.
For more information, visit the Texas School Safety Center’s Youth Preparedness Camp website or email Joe McKenna, Camp Coordinator, at jmm272@txstate.edu.
GIRL SCOUT EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS PATCH
In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) partnered with the Girls Scouts of the USA (Girl Scouts) to create the Girl Scout Preparedness Patch to engage Girl Scouts and their families in emergency preparedness activities. DHS and the Girl Scouts collaborated to create the Preparedness Patch and signed an agreement to formalize a partnership between FEMA’s Citizen Corps and the Girl Scouts that “creates a partnership to motivate young women to become community leaders in emergency management and response fields and raises public awareness about personal preparedness, training and community service opportunities.”
The Emergency Preparedness Patch Program helps young women identify potential emergencies and prepare themselves and their families. You can download the Emergency Preparedness Patch Program Activity Booklet or visit the Girl Scouts Emergency Preparedness Patch Program website for more information.
There are other opportunities to work with the Girl Scouts besides the Emergency Preparedness Patch Program. Tiffany Espensen, a FEMA Youth Preparedness Council member, has been actively involved in bringing the preparedness message to Girl Scouts in her home state of California this past year. In her first engagement, she assisted the Julian Teen CERT in graduating a troop of Girl Scouts as newly trained and certified Teen CERT members. Soon after, she became a Juliette Girl Scout, an individually registered Girl Scout. Tiffany connected with the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles and of New York to discuss how the Girl Scouts could incorporate more emergency preparedness into their programs. Tiffany is “...now working closely with the Girl Scouts of the USA, putting together a program that will incorporate several of their badges and the emergency preparedness patch by training through Teen CERT and local Red Cross Chapters.”
Source: http://www.girlscouts.org/news/news_releases/2009/preparedness_patch.asp.
FREE PREPAREDNESS TRAINING MATERIALS FOR YOUTH NOW AVAILABLE
We are excited to announce that printed materials for IS-909 Community Preparedness: Implementing Simple Activities for Everyone are now available for free in the FEMA Warehouse. This training course will prepare you to implement a program for promoting individual and community preparedness through simple and engaging activities. Additionally, the accompanying 16 Preparedness Activities for Communities Everywhere can help educate individuals about relatively easy steps to take to prepare for all types of hazards. These materials are free, available online and in print, and designed for anyone—including youth—to use in coordination with your local emergency preparedness partners or local preparedness programs. You can find additional information about the tools on the Whole Community Preparedness website.
FEMA provides direct technical assistance to individuals and organizations interested in starting education and training programs in their local communities. Contact the dedicated support team for direct technical assistance about implementing these activities, at Citizencorps@dhs.gov. Anyone interested in ordering materials can email FEMA-Publications-Warehouse@FEMA.gov, call 1 (800) 480-2520, or access them electronically on the Emergency Management Institute (EMI) website.
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