INTERAGENCY COORDINATING COUNCIL ON EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS AND INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES
Get Involved In Your Community
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Get Involved In Your Community

Direct involvement in one’s community is one of the most effective ways to be prepared for the event of an emergency. In addition to putting into place a solid personal preparedness plan, equally important is the necessity of becoming a vital part of the overall emergency preparedness solution. By establishing close working relationships with local relief organizations, law enforcement, non-profit organizations, for-profit businesses, neighborhood watch groups, home owner associations, religious institutions, and other community-based endeavors, people may effectively place themselves in the best position both to receive timely and important information about emergency preparedness efforts and to provide individual perspective as emergency preparedness plans are effectively put into place with appropriate and meaningful attention given to the needs of people with different types of disabilities.

Organizations engaging in emergency preparedness efforts should seek input from members of the community and reach out to stakeholder groups from all sectors. Once plans are established, a broad-based outreach and education campaign should seek both to inform and to call people to action. At a community level, individuals with and without disabilities have a critical role to play in emergency preparedness. As more people and organizations come together to expand this work, people with disabilities, their family and friends, and the community as a whole will benefit.

  • Citizen Corps
    Provides opportunities for people to participate in a range of measures to make their families, their homes, and their communities safer from the threats of crime, terrorism, and disasters of all kinds.
  • Presentations from the 2009 Citizen Corps Conference
    This conference provided the opportunity for attendees to share best practices on collaborative emergency planning, discuss preparedness outreach and education for targeted populations, learn innovative approaches to funding, hear updates on DHS/FEMA initiatives, get updates on findings from citizen preparedness research, network with other Citizen Corps participants and much more.

For more information in this Resource Center on how to get involved in your community, try these pages: