First Silicon Valley ARC Chapter Disaster Volunteer Meeting

The first meeting of the disaster volunteers from the new Silicon Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross took place on Tuesday Jan 27, 2009 with about 70 people in attendance.

It was, in part, a "Meet and Greet" for the volunteers from the two former chapters, but was also intended to seed the new chapter mantra of "Excite, Engage, and Empower." In this case, that meant starting volunteers thinking about preparedness needs, and understanding that they do not have to wait to be told what to do, but should feel able to take initiative and come up with suggestions when they see that actions need to be taken.

Specific attitudes that need to be overcome:

• "I don't have the authority to do that"
• Well, if not you, then who?
• If you don't know, maybe you d0. Find out.
  
• "'They' have to ..."
• Sorry, you can't assign action items to others. You can take an action item to ask them if they can and will take it on.

Mistakes were made:

• The food was in the center of the room, splitting attendees into two large groups, and leaving speakers talking to the food.
• Meeting purpose and process was not made clear from the outset.
• It was not made clear up front that this was to be a working rather than an informational meeting.
  
• Lost teaching moment: A public, flat-out answer of "No" was challenged only on the underlying reason, and not on the unacceptability of a "No" response.
• Follow-up plan was not clear.

However, a lot of energy, good ideas and momentum were generated. I hope to be able to channel this into an opportunity to develop and experiment with the Participatory Preparedness Planning Process methodology.

Participatory Preparedness Planning (PPP)

One of the obstacles to effective preparedness is that many planners have little or no actual experience with disaster response, so that considerable amounts of learning may be needed before they can comfortably engage in planning activities. Additionally, disaster preparedness is typically only one of many competing demands on their time.

Participatory Preparedness Planning (PPP) is a preparedness planning methodology that integrates participatory design, training and disaster exercise development in order to provide planning teams with a structure for thinking through realistic scenarios, reviewing response plans, and developing realistic action plans accomplishing preparedness tasks.

The methodology assumes that preparedness is an on-going process of planning and training, and that plans are not documents but individual and institutionalized knowledge. It works through a series of meetings in which participants define desirable outcomes and match them to the actions and resources necessary to achieve those outcomes. Thinking of outcomes, actions and resources is done in the context of specific event scenarios that are based on the hazard and risk analysis of the relevant jurisdiction.