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Citizen Corps Highlights Ten Successful Councils Around the Country

Release Date: June 3

C. Suzanne Mencer, Director of the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness within the Department of Homeland Security, today announced new resources for Citizen Corps Councils available on the Citizen Corps website. Ten communities from around the country provide their shared view of how to start a Citizen Corps Council and profile their own activities. The profiles provide case history on developing, implementing, and sustaining a Citizen Corps Council and include on-line links to supporting materials.

"The information captured here will be extremely useful to communities around the country who are working to bring Citizen Corps to their area," said Ms. Mencer, "Many thanks to the communities included here for their willingness to share information and for their unfailing support of Citizen Corps."

The experience of these Councils exemplify important considerations for all Councils: the importance of connections and relationships in forming the Council; the need to be flexible and adaptive while staying focused on the mission; and that there is no one right way, but that we can learn from each other as we develop what works best in each community.

These profiles also highlight how the national Citizen Corps mission is tailored to each community and demonstrate local creativity and flexibility in designing an approach to accommodate the unique attributes of the community, including size, geography, and population diversity. Examples of local activities conducted by these ten communities include:

  • Arlington County Citizen Corps Council (VA) used focus groups to find out more about the needs of special populations, and discovered that Arlington's elderly hesitated to leave their homes to refill prescriptions during the sniper shooting of 2002.
  • Belvidere Citizen Corps Council (IL) tapped into the City's unusually high youth population to create Belvidere's Youth Citizen Corps, which operated car washes to raise funds for local Citizen Corps affiliates and volunteered thousands of hours to address a wide range of community needs.
  • Fresno Citizen Corps Council (CA) formed an effective community network by building strong working relationships among a diverse array of key community stakeholders, and provided training programs in Spanish and several Southeast Asia languages for its diverse residents.
  • Harris County Citizen Corps Council (TX) expanded their communication reach to the community with a 211 phone system which keeps residents up to date on impending weather problems and also linked its Web site to the Harris County Office of Emergency Management to provide real-time radar pictures and current rainfall totals.
  • The Kansas City area already had an existing umbrella organization, the Kansas City Metropolitan Community Organizations Active in Disaster (MO), to coordinate critical services to individuals and families in times of disaster. So its members jumped at the opportunity to build on this existing structure, rather than building a new Council from the ground up.
  • The King County Citizen Corps Council (WA) designed a process for conducting community needs assessments, focused on aggressive CERT training, and drafted an amendment to Washington's Good Samaritan law to protect volunteers from potential emergency-related lawsuits.
  • The Lancaster Citizen Corps Council (PA) brought technology to the job without breaking the bank by soliciting contributions from area companies and public-sector entities to provide safe school planning and information sharing tools and software for the Medical Reserve Corps.
  • The Orlando Citizen Corps Council (FL) tapped into the range of experience and the breadth of interest in the community leadership by rotating the Council leadership every two years. They are also supported by an elite group of Hometown Security Volunteers who are trained in four different Citizen Corps Programs to take the reins at the neighborhood level.
  • The Citizen Corps Council for Homeland Security of Southern Arizona (AZ) keeps volunteers on the cutting edge of bio-terrorism planning by running mock attacks and response drills. They assembled a crew of 50 nurses for their Vaccination Strike Team, and worked with state licensing boards to reduce the cost of maintaining licenses for retired medical professionals.
  • The Tulsa Project Impact Citizen Corps Council (OK) put structure to their efforts with a seven-step action plan led by interdisciplinary Safe and Secure Teams to help neighborhoods, businesses, and other organizations become better prepared through assessment, education, and preparedness projects.

In profiling these ten communities, we also recognize the hundreds of other Councils who are doing their part to ensure we fulfill the mission to engage everyone in America to prepare, train, and volunteer!