[Becky Marquis - The Ready Campaign] Hi everyone, This is Becky Marquis, I am the acting director for the Ready Campaign, and welcome to the 2009 National Preparedness Month Webinar. We're really excited to have this call today. I apologize for the little bit of delay in getting started, but we had almost 500 people register for this webinar, and we have a little bit under that online right now. But we're going to go ahead and get started, because we value everyone's time. So I'm going to get right into the agenda. First, we are going to give a little bit of a background about ready and National Preparedness Month. I know for a lot of you this might be just a refresher, but there are some folks on the line who have potentially never participated in NPM before. Next we are going to talk about what National Preparedness Month membership is, what it means to be a part of the Coalition, and what kind of resources we provide to all of you. After that Jackie Snelling [from Citizen Corps] will talk a little bit about what Citizen Corps does and how you can get involved with what they're doing and how to register, most importantly to be a Coalition Member for National Preparedness Month. Finally, we are going to have a Question & Answer session at the end. I also encourage you, if you would like, to type a question into the discussion area, and we'll try to answer them as we can. We'll also open the lines at the end but as I said, we have a couple hundred people on this call, so we may run out of time before we get to everyone's questions. If you have a question, you can type it into the discussion panel or you can mail it to npm@dhs.gov and we'll make sure to get back to you within the next day or so. I'm going to go ahead and get started. As I mentioned the speakers will be myself; Amy Gibson-Grant, who is a campaign director for the Ad Council, which is a partner of ours here at the ready campaign; and Jackie Snelling, who is with Citizen Corps. For those of you that don't know, and just as a refresher to everyone, the Ready Campaign is a national public service advertising campaign. We are sponsored by FEMA. We also, as I mentioned, have a very strong partnership with the Advertising Council. The Ready Campaign educates and empowers Americans to prepare for and respond to emergencies including natural disasters and potential terror attacks. Our goal is to get Americans involved and ultimately increase our level of preparedness. The Ready Campaign is committed all year long; we do many speaking engagements, and we have a number of materials available for access. I'm sure all of you are familiar with our web site which is ready.gov. We have our general market, which is our General Public Market Campaign that we call Ready America; and we also have Listo America, which is our Spanish language version. We have also expanded over the years to produce a variety of materials. For example, we have brochures and instructional videos for pet owners. We know how important pets are to families, and want to aid in making sure they are prepared as well. We also have materials and videos for older Americans and individuals with disabilities and special needs. Yet another component of the Ready Campaign is Ready Business. Many of you are familiar with that which is our campaign designed to prepare small to medium sized businesses for emergencies. The materials on Ready Business can be used by any business, small or large, we just say the target is small to medium sized businesses because often times smaller businesses do not have the resources or manpower to do some of the emergency planning that many of the bigger companies may utilize. In addition to Ready Business, there’s Ready Kids, which is a component of our web site that educates children around emergency preparedness as well. So, this September for National Preparedness Month 2009, we're really trying to change perceptions about emergency preparedness, and help Americans understand what it truly means to be Ready. You will notice our logo is "Are you ready, or are you [capital R] Ready?," and that’s sort of where we came up with that. It is also our public service campaign goal this year to start to change people's perceptions around emergency preparedness. Amy Gibson-Grant is going to talk a little bit about our up-coming PSAs, which we will be launching during National Preparedness month in September of this year. With that, I am now going to turn it over to Amy Gibson-Grant for the next couple of slides. [Amy Gibson-Grant - The Ad Council] Thank you Becky. As you mentioned, our goal is to get Americans to truly understand what it means to be ready. That strategic premise came out of a couple of months of work and thinking about what we've been doing in the campaign here in development of the PSA work and NPM as well. What we've seen in our tracking study back at the beginning of this year, (we've tracked various metrics on this campaign over the years), is exhibited on this slide which shows a couple of the key metrics that we need to keep an eye on. People self-reporting on whether they have created a kit, made a plan, or sought info recently about the topic, all contribute to this information. What we've seen in our recent wave of tracking studies is that preparedness is leveling off. We had some initial achievements early on in the campaign that are holding steady, but we haven't seen additional achievements beyond the initial peak of the 2005-2006 time period. So this year we want to delve into what some of the reasons are for why this was the case. As we worked through our strategic process, we had some focus groups: we did mini quantitative studies, as well as secondary research in the community just to sort of tap into people's feelings and mindset. We noticed a low concern or desensitization to the issue of preparedness mainly because there’s a sense that people are prepared already, or that they believe they can get ready pretty easily on the fly and that they can quickly pull things together. Because Time quiets nerves, there have been natural disasters in recent years, but we are further and further away from 9/11 and getting further away from Katrina, and really those events are high calamity but low incident events, and so as time goes on people feel like, while those moments elevate the awareness of it, overall they feel that "Its not Going To Happen To Me" because they have a pantry full of stuff, they have a garage that is full of tools, they have a laundry room that has Bleach in it. I'm sure this is keeping in line with a lot of the things you're finding; that people have a lot of these items, they just haven’t taken the time to sort through and make sure they have the right quantities, the right implements to use them in the case of an emergency, and really have them all in a concentrated place where they can easily access them. You know, one father said “I think I'm as prepared as I can be". The third point is that people think they can prepare on the fly, which actually correlates with the second point, that people have all of these diverse things scattered in places throughout their houses. They feel like they've "got all of these things, they've just got them in different places," a Manhattan mom said in our qualitative research. But what we've found in our quantitative study is that people have said that they could get ready if an emergency occurred, yet they don't feel prepared. So all of these things we've been finding through our research and our conversations with people is that there's a false sense of security around the issue, and our target mindset around it is all driving into that. Preparedness for them equals smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, batteries and flashlights, it means being prepared for a fire in their house; they think they're already prepared, and that they can "wing it on the fly". They embrace the personal responsibility that is theirs; this is one positive outlook for us that we can always communicate, or in this space take advantage of. They also have a "take charge" mentality or attitude, so we really see this as an opportunity to take this mindset and really activate them and help them. We understand that they feel prepared already, and that there are some things they are already doing, which is great, but they need to "up the ante" a little bit, and really embrace readiness in a new way. So that being said, with our 2009 Campaign, we're working to develop additional TV, Radio, Print, Outdoor, and web banners that all go around the strategic premise of tapping into what's at the emotional core of emergency preparedness. Shaking them up, just a little bit, not too much, not a scare tactic by any means, but just getting them to understand the importance of the issue and trying to activate them to really prepare. [Becky Marquis - The Ready Campaign] As we mentioned, we will be launching those PSAs in September. We will be having some kind of event to launch those either at the end of August or the beginning of September. They will be available on our web site and of course, people can link to them. We will also be sending out information to all of our members and partners. We will keep you posted as things are made available. Let me take some time to explain what NPM is: it is in September, it is the nationwide effort organized by the Ready Campaign and supported by Coalition Members, which is all of you. This September marks the 6th annual National Preparedness Month, and we're encouraging Americans to take the simple steps to prepare for emergencies in their homes, businesses, and communities. The coalition is open to everyone, any public sector or private sector organization can register to be a member of National Preparedness Month. And obviously, it is thanks to organizations like yours that we have been so successful. September is the Ready Campaign's biggest outreach effort, and last year we had 3200 organizations sign on, and that can be compared to 80 which signed on just 6 years ago. We're really hoping to continue to increase it as well. As Amy mentioned, we're really challenging people to take personal responsibility for emergency preparedness, to recast their role in a new light, and to remind them that they are their first responders. If people can prepare themselves and their families for emergencies, that frees-up emergency services to allow them to get to the most critical people first, those who have the greatest need, and then to be more able to take care of everyone. So it is really important to take the 3 steps that Ready recommends and that's why we decided on this logo and this theme of "Are you ready or are you Ready?" So, here are some of the resources that we can provide to coalition members, once you register, and we'll talk about registration at the end; we will have a National Preparedness Month web site, separate from ready.gov, that features a comprehensive toolkit. We do that toolkit every year; it has been updated to have ideas for hosting Preparedness events, and some sample materials that are already written that you can customize for your community and your organization. There are emails, news letter articles, templates for press releases, media advisories, posters, bill stuffers, and then just tips and ideas on ways you can partner with some local organizations. We've updated it for 2009, with the new theme and many ideas in there for you. We try to make it as easy as possible for you to promote National Preparedness Month as much as you can. I should say that when you do sign on as a Coalition Member, this is what you're signing on to do: to do any kind of emergency preparedness promotion you can. We're not asking you to spend a lot of money, we're not asking you to unnecessarily host an event if you can't take that on, simply asking you to commit yourself to sending out an email to your employees and taking the time to remind them that its National Preparedness Month. It is a great opportunity to prepare or distribute some of our information, brochures, or messaging. We have some success stories in the toolkit of what people have done in the past; some have hosted very large scale preparedness events, and others have done very small activities. There's a nice wide range of things to do in there and we just want to help you to spread the message in any way that you can do that. On the NPM website there is, in addition to the toolkit, a section for NPM activities where you can learn what other coalition members are doing this year. I encourage you to post what you're doing, that’s the only way that part is going to work because if you share your stories, people can read one another and find out what everybody is doing. There is also an event calendar on there, and that is a central listing of all the NPM events going on around the country. Again that's only going to work if you post yours so people can see what’s going on, so it’s also a good way to see if you want to plan a big event that your resources can provide, and you can find out how to partner with others that are conducting other NPM events. For example, if there is an organization in your community who's already hosting a preparedness fair, you could maybe host a table or booth there. We also encourage you to post your success stories even from last year, and what you are currently doing this year on the calendar. Nationally, as I mentioned, we're going to be launching our PSAs. As we get into the summer we will plan other events and activities and we will be keeping you posted on those. We will also be doing some media outreach as we do every year, where we reach out to some national and local media and encourage them about preparedness in September. We will be sending out a news release in June, and we link back to our coalition page in that news release, so as you register for National Preparedness Month, you will be listed on our web site so that people can see that you're a partner of ours and then we'll have another press release right at September, to let people know that it IS National Preparedness Month. We also have factsheets that we update every month, on our website [ready.gov] that everyone, including the media, can take advantage of. [Jackie Snelling - Citizen Corps] Good afternoon to all of you who are supporting National Preparedness Month and our shared Citizen Corps mission of integrating Safety and Preparedness into every part of our communities, every day. I want to thank all of you who are working to build a culture of preparedness and to combine all of our community resources together to build resilient individuals, organizations, and communities. For those of you who are not working with Citizen Corps, I want to take this opportunity to invite and encourage you all to come together and work with other partners in our state and local Citizen Corp councils for National Preparedness Month activities throughout the year. You can find your National, State, and Local contacts and resources at the CitizenCorps.gov Website. At all levels, our Citizen Corps councils, programs, and partners from all sectors, work to support National Preparedness Month with activities. This is an important opportunity for National Preparedness Month particularly at the local level to extend our local outreach and to engage all sectors in these National Preparedness Month activities and nontraditional partners, so that we can continue to partner year round. I'd like to call your particular attention to the valuable resources that are available through the 10 FEMA regions and our community preparedness officers and other regional staff that promote and support preparedness and community resiliency National Preparedness Month activities and year round. You can find their contact information on the FEMA and Citizen Corps websites. These are a few examples of how Citizen Corps Councils and their partners have reached out during National Preparedness Month to include and engage partners that they can then keep involved in their communities to build a culture of preparedness year round. [Becky Marquis - The Ready Campaign] I just wanted to briefly mention that there are always additional National Preparedness Month resources. I'm sure we have a lot of State and Local government officials on the call, as well as local Emergency Mgmt. offices, Homeland Security, firefighters, police officers, and obviously they are great community partners as well. You can go to ready.gov and click on the "be informed" section of Ready America and find a map and click on your state for state and local resources there, and you can also use Google to access your community and find other information as well. There are neighborhood organizations, as well as nonprofit organizations. The Red Cross is a very a big partner of ours and I know there are a lot of Red Cross chapters on the line. Faith-Based organizations are great partners and are a valuable resource to do outreach. For National Preparedness Month coalition members, we will update the list of Coalition members on the ready.gov site weekly, so you can go on there, look under your state, and see if there is anyone else in your community that is a coalition member and if they might want to partner with you. So, the most important part of this entire presentation is "How do you register?" and "Where do you get the toolkit?". Simply go to ready.gov, and click on the banner on the front page or any of the NPM links throughout the site. There is a "Register Now" button on that page, it has the toolkit, calendar, and all of the materials available for you. If you have questions send an email to npm@dhs.gov and that goes to me and all Ready partners. Additionally we still have PSAs available from last year that you can request by sending an email to ready@dhs.gov. [Q&A] [Larry Zuscon - Cannel Putnam Emergency] If you registered for 2008 NPM, do you need to re-register? Yes, excellent question. We ask that you please re-register because we cannot automatically assume that because you registered last year that you wish to re-register for this year. [Margaret Tucker - James City Council] I was interested in whether or not the new PSAs will be available prior to September because we are planning an event for August? Probably not, our plans are to launch them at the end of August and there will be a national campaign based around them. For your events prior to then you can by all means use the current PSAs which are not out of date by any means. You can request a DVD of the videos by sending an email to us at [ready@dhs.gov] or download them from our site [http://www.ready.gov]. [Larry Zuscon - Cannel Putnam Emergency] How are you going to share with the group the answers to the questions you receive by email after the conference is over? We will be posting this presentation and the questions and answers on the NPM web site, as well as a transcript of the meeting soon after the conference is over. [Tracy Fagen - Netixis Global Assoc.] You said we could register on your site, I am not quite sure on how to do that? Go to Ready.gov, click on the front page banner or link to NPM 2009, then click on the “Register Now” button. This will point you to the form for registration. [Stacy Hadjack - Buck County Government] Do you plan on integrating social media into this year’s efforts? Good question. We are twittering, which we will continue to do; you can follow us there at readydotgov, and we will post messages there. We also have a widget that is accessible under the banner for New Emergency Online Planning Tools. A lot of the documentation and links to what we're doing in social media are provided in the toolkit. and we will be posting videos on http://www.youtube.com/FEMA. [John Davis - UMB] Last year you posted one message a week around "get a kit", "make a plan" "be informed" and "be involved". Are you going to continue that message this year? We have twitter messages that we send out similar to these messages. We didn't make that specifically our theme this year, but we may include it in our web site materials. [Larry Zuscon - Cannel Putnam Emergency] Would it be useful to have a survey in the toolkit to assess readiness that would visually tell them based on their answers whether they are ready or not? Yes, we do have a questionnaire in the toolkit, as well as an online tool to determine your readiness quotient [RQ] which you can use as well. [Maryland Godfrey - Coaches Health Dept.] Are there any promotional materials available for us to order? Yes, there is information and an order form in the toolkit, but they are limited to ensure that supplies are balanced. There are also copies online that you can download and print. All of the information about that is in the toolkit. [Cristine Guervo - PTMS] I was looking to get more info on the Citizen Corps Council for the Youth Kids Camps and the State Pets? State Pets and Kids Camps are activities done by some of the states, we can get you information on that. The State Kids/Pets program was also a local activity. There are brochures available for this from Citizen Corps that we can get to you. [Hellen Hellales - Oglen County Health] Is there going to be anything in the toolkit on how to get messages up for Special Populations? We can certainly talk and look into adding information on that! Susan Jacobo - So Cal EDIS I was wondering if you could give this presentation locally on one of our meetings? We can definitely work through that, send us an email! [Elaine Specks - Battelle] Will we be able to localize the PSAs with our logos like we've done in the past? Yes, we will be offering that to state and local partners as long as you have the appropriate information on your sites and agency materials. [Heather Foster - Volunteer WV] Are your PSAs downloadable in digital format? Yes, they are downloadable on the ready web site, the links are also in the toolkit, and you can also request more information or hard copies at: ready@dhs.org [Susan Sanderson - City Of Detroit DHS] We use the readiness quotient survey, and we warn them about heat awareness. Are there any efforts on translating site materials into other languages? We are making efforts to translate materials into Spanish. Much has been translated already, if anyone has any expertise in language translation please contact us at: ready@dhs.gov [John Banter - Scott County Emergency] Is there any information available on Campus Preparedness Events? Campus CERT is available, we can give you our campus CERT advisor contact information. We can give you other contacts as well offline. [Bonnie & Ed Ross - Community Volunteers] Do you have any info on teen cert? If you give us your contact information we will get in contact with you, it is a growing field. [Janet Tipalowis - Philadelphia OEM] Some of your coalition members have done youth camps. How can I get more information on them? These are state activities I will have to follow up on in reference to CERT training and Outreach programs. There is a variety of information available, we will get your contact information and send details on that to you. [Nancy Patratelli - New Avenues Inc.] My question is a business question, is there a business CERT? And what’s planned for NPM in terms of business? Yes, Citizen Corps has plenty of information on their site along with tips and activities. You can coordinate your plans with your local emergency agencies and they will be able to help you. [Summary] If you have any questions, please send them to npm@dhs.gov. Thank you for attending.