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At the 2010 TEDMED Conference in San Diego, CA, Administrator Craig Fugate spoke about the need to expand the emergency management team and engage all Americans in better preparing our communities before disaster strikes.

He took the opportunity to challenge his fellow attendees to come up with ideas on how we can better prepare communities before disasters strike:

“How can we—as we play our many roles as part of businesses, governments, medical and emergency response fields, community groups, schools and families—make our communities more resilient?”

To further the administrator’s challenge, we’re currently accepting your preparedness ideas on Challenge.gov until January 29, 2011.  Our original deadline was early January, but we are getting some great ideas, and want to give everyone the opportunity to submit their answer to our challenge.

We have received a lot of great submissions to date, and recently published a handful to give a sample of some of the ideas.  Here are a few:

• Award boy/girl scouts with a merit badge for preparedness after they take a Community Emergency Response Team class
• Host a “Get Ready Now” weekend in your local community, focusing on individual and family preparedness

We would love to hear your ideas on how to make your family, school, workplace or community more resilient.  Sharing ideas and collaborating are important steps in motivating everyone to think about preparing before a disaster strikes.  To submit your preparedness idea, visit our challenge today. If you wish to submit your idea without using the Challenge.gov site, please email: FEMA-New-Media@dhs.gov.

- Shayne


About the challenge
The submissions will be judged by FEMA leadership and the winning idea will be featured on fema.gov.  Submissions will be judged based on originality, level of community engagement, and ease of implementation.  Challenge submissions are moderated before posting.