| What can I say? After all these months (of thrashing out our direction, making plans, making choices, becoming incorporated) and weeks (of getting down to even more decisions about THIS and other events, which ones we want to do and why, which ones we can afford to do, which ones we can physically go to, and then what positioning to adopt in presenting our material, what is the concept that we are projecting out there, defining in the eyes of the audience who we are, what's our product', our services etc) and days (of actually getting the final logistics done) to this event, it was just GREAT to be there and to see the kind of responses we are getting.
Not to be too cocky about it, but from the APHA experience, I sort of already knew we would be well received. It's like what RM said, these are people in emergency management, yes, but they are just so BOWLED OVER that whereas everyone has been TALKING about individual and personal preparedness for ages and ages, we have actually been DOING it, ie putting ideas and stuff together to help people prep. I am appreciative of all the nice comments (often delivered with exclamation marks!!!!) of course, but there were times when the twentieth person said "it's so AMAZING that you guys are doing this!" when I was thinking, yes, AND you aint's seen nothing yet! There are many of us out there, on the internet, who have been doing this and are KEEN to go and make a difference. Just that they didn't get a chance to SHOW it to you yet!
To give everyone an overview, there are multiple layers of what we are trying to achieve. Yes, we want to put this material out there, to help whoever it is who wants to use this in their community to get people to start preparing, with key emphasis on the word START, cos that defines our ultimate target audience, the public who haven't started, and therefore our content. This is the easiest part of our goal, to put up any and all material for anyone to use as they like. In time, when we get the website together, we hope to have maybe a forum where we can also collect additional ideas for such purposes, to be shared with all who want them.
Secondly, also want to share this stuff with the professionals, initially with a simple idea (at the APHA) just to say, this is easy, you can do it, which btw looks like it's becoming our unofficial 'motto' lol One of my personal motivations was to take this stuff developed online into the 'real' world, cos there's a limit to who and how many you can affect just doing stuff online. That still applies, and just like at the APHA, there were many who are at varying stages of putting out material for the public or for some specific constituency (employees of the healthcare and first responder sectors, and families with special needs, being the most prominent examples), and as always having multiple tasks on their plate, it just is not easy to put together something like THIS! It is as I said the product of many months of hard work by many individuals on this and other forums, sharing ideas, encouraging each other etc, and certainly one would not expect these professionals to have the wherewithal to make this up on their own, not to the level of detail and practicality that we are demonstrating! So they are very appreciative that we have put together a 'whole' product that they can just take as is and use, or modify depending on their needs. However they use it, it just cuts down their work by so much that it's much more likely, IMO, that promoting personal preparedness will now have a chance to rise up to nearer the top of their To-Do list, which up to now has not happened partly because of the complexities involved (ie people as always tend to put off doing difficult and/or non-urgent tasks with no looming deadline and no one breathing down their necks, which personal prep is still very much in that category!)
But there is a third layer to what we are trying to achieve. This is about attempting to put the considerable but vastly different talents and resources of grassroots and professionals to work together and making it win-win, because the bottomline is both groups mostly want the same thing, to get the country prepared, at a time when most of the world don't know and don't care, and if we can find some way that each can enhance the other, the synergy created can be amazing. As usual, simply because of who we/they are, there are divergent views in addition to divergent needs, but PRECISELY because of that, barring any irreconcilable differences, they can or should be natural allies and partners. After all, what is the point of partnering only with those who are exactly the same as you, since they do not bring much that will complement and enhance what you already got? If what is stopping you from achieving success in your community is credibility and funds, for example, wouldn't it make more sense to find other different people who have those assets and let them help you? In return, of course, they have to be able to find value in that relationship.
Trying to negotiate the no man's land between these divergent views and needs, however, has not been easy. As RM said, listen to what the FEMA guy has to say, and you will get sorely disappointed from the perspective of someone chomping at the bits to get people prepared for a pandemic. I got really frustrated because I asked a question on personal preparedness, specifically whether there are ways of getting big corporations like Walmart to put together personal preparedness packages for families which will greatly facilitate the ease of prepping as well as help 'normalize' the idea of prepping, and I got a response that basically said how great it is that state and local emergency response managers are already working with the private sector like Walmart to put together packages that can be used (by and through official responders!) in the event of a disaster!
OTOH, it needs to be noted that he was met with repeated rounds of enthusiastic applause, something quite extraordinary to see in such events. Why? Because the issues plaguing the profession, the huge challenges thrown up by changes in the structure and command relationships of agencies like FEMA and DHS since 911, have been one of the biggest barriers for professionals to achieve the kind of results, be it planning, response, or preparedness, that they want. The ongoing turf-wars between not just agencies but different power centers behind them, have been debilitating. (these are explored in more detail in the 6-part National Response Framework series that I wrote a while ago. Yes, 6 parts and they don't go anywhere near enough to explain the issues, such are the complexities!) Katrina was the worst example but be under no illusion that the effects have been pervasive and a source of institutional paralysis. Now we are seeing FEMA being strengthened (although many say not enough) by the new NRF, and some new thinking coming out of FEMA, the chances of actually being able to get some things DONE properly are becoming just a tad better. I mention this because it is a stark example of both the cause and the context of the divergence between professionals and grassroots, that we all are working on different LEVELS of the same problem, and because of that both our approaches and our prime concerns are of necessity going to be different. (And if you are the kind of person for whom such discussions just go way over your head, then I'd like to suggest that it's enough that you understand these issues exist and to find a way of acknowledging and accepting that it will be a long while before they will see eye-to-eye with what you see, simply BECAUSE their problems are so complex that you cannot understand them! If that makes any sense, LOL)
Back to the 'vision' thing, with regards to what this RM project is about. This third element is being worked on as we speak, so all this is at a development stage and everything is tentative at this point. The basic concept is very simple. First a bit of history. Where it came from was back in around maybe June or July of last year, (shortly after the hhs blog, I guess) when I realized that bashing tptb and telling them they SHOULD go and get people prepared, while entirely justified, didn't look like it was going to get us anywhere any time soon. But I knew that we have tremendous talent among us, that we have a great deal to offer. I started to actively look for models of community outreach that are more likely to be successful than others, and to find ways of systematically fine-tuning and modifying it down to the most important but most simple elements, in order to put together a simple package that any grassroots person can take and use with the community to promote preparedness, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME, finding institutional support such that hopefully we'll be able to find both a little bit of the legitimacy/credibility as well as the small amounts of funds needed, like what ACM said about 'pizza money' or the cost of a booth at a local fair, that are often barriers to success for non-credentialed non-affiliated individuals. This last as I said still needs a lot of work, both in finding the 'right' formula in the presentation that will hit the audience (whatever audience you are using it for) in the right places and in finding common ground with institutions to make it POSSIBLE for them to support us. Having met many dedicated and very smart professionals in the past couple of years, I KNOW there are many who want the same things that we do, but they work inside a system where they do not and cannot make up their own rules. By necessity governments are slow and cumbersome machineries, they do not have the agility of private individuals. OTOH, they have huge institutional resources that grassroots cannot ever hope to match, whether in funds, expertise, or the sheer scale of their REACH, (ie their ability to DISSEMINATE systematically) to every part of both government and communities in every location in the country. THAT was/is the challenge that I initially set out to find solutions for, that we at this point are actively working on as a team.
We will be presenting more-or-less the same content in Atlanta - a display of the 2 weeks of food for a family of four and other preparedness items and ideas, a set of posters that explains the issues and motivates ordinary members of the public WHO UP TO NOW HAVE NOT STARTED PREPARING, to get them to start on the path, resources in the form of fliers etc to take away, etc. ie what we are presenting is a prototype of THE display package that we hope to find some institutional support for, so that we can begin the process of empowering grassroots individuals to go out and do community outreach on their own. I am under no illusions: this is a tall order, and there are many hurdles to overcome. OTOH, these past few days, we have received a tremendous amount of good feedback as well as a number of offers of support, albeit in varying degrees of tentativeness. Understand that in general if you are a salesperson trying to close some deals, it takes many 'prospects' and a lot of work to find one who is going to 'buy'! It is especially hard if what you are looking for is not just one-off sponsorship (which will be nice too) but also helping us turn this into an ongoing program!
That, approximately, is where we are at. We have committed to doing the Public Health Preparedness Summit in Atlanta, as well as put our names down for the 2008 APHA Expo in October. We would very much like to go to the national PTA convention in June in San Diego, but at this stage it doesn't look like we have the funds for that, so after today we will start actively soliciting sponsorship, for that event in particular and also for the rest of our activities.
In addition to that, the other critical piece is support from y'all (yes, I believe i have earned the credentials to use that word! LOL!), because none of this could have happened just from the three of us (2 of us formally, and ACM on an ad hoc basis). All this as I said is the result of the work of the hive mind, and going forward we will need both the encouragements, the ideas, and actual support whether in the form of donations (we are working on setting up a paypal account) as well as getting more people involved in the process. I believe this project cannot succeed without the participation of the community out of which the ideas were born, who are also the same people who care most about personal preparedness.
Many of you have expressed the wish, the desire, and the motivation in varying degrees, of making change in your community. I believe you can achieve this by participation at 2 different levels, first by taking the materials that we have and going out to work with your community, and secondly by joining us in specific events that are within your capability to turn up at. We have all learned so much even just from 2 events, that I am sure anyone who wants to participate will find many sources of personal satisfaction in the process. OTOH, as you probably realize by the mere fact that you have read thus far, this ain't gonna be a walk in the park. Be prepared to work very hard, expect the going to be tough and challenging at times. There's a lot of totally unglamorous work, but most importantly, there will be challenges in adjusting and aligning individual views which we all hold dear to the bigger goal that will require everyone to make some concessions, in order for a group project to succeed. If you are that type of person, ie have the ability to look beyond your personal beliefs and needs to conform to the requirements inherent in the bigger goal, just for the duration of the event that you want to participate in, then please please do get in touch with us. If you are available particularly for the first 2 days of the Atlanta event, that is our most urgent need in that department, cos it's going to be a big event with a couple of thousand people, and a minimum of three people is needed for us to just physically be able to get through those 4 days. We are very fortunate to have the offer of help from one person for the latter half of the event, but as I said the first 2 days we are still one person short.
Beyond that, if you would like to participate in principle, then please also let us know and we'll keep in touch with you about opportunities as they come up. If and when we succeed in getting the funds for the national PTA event, which btw to me is probably critical to our success in bringing parents as a group on board to support and advocate for personal preparedness (as well as school closure for CMG etc), we still need more manpower. There is no way RM and I can do this on our own, so if you live anywhere near San Diego or if you don't but can get there for June 19-22 (19th for set-up, the expo starts the next day), please please do let us know asap, cos we cannot commit to this event without both the funds and the manpower, but the time is running short for us to get a well-situated booth!
Thank you again, all you good people who have been cheering for us. We feel the support, it galvanizes our resolve, and we deeply appreciate that. |
