With the pandemic in mind, we also created a resource sheet providing information about medical shelters for vulnerable individuals.
We’re continuing to reference and distribute the comprehensive Emergency Preparedness Resource Curriculum that our institution produced in 2015. This guide emphasizes safety and preparedness at home, work, school, and in the community. Additional resources are available on our Emergency Preparedness Now webpage.
Next Steps
The conference will become an annual event, and we hope to scale it up so that other Extension programs and other institutions can use the model. Depending on the situation with COVID, we may have an in-person or a hybrid conference. We need to weigh the pros and cons. We may also develop a specific focus on Extension professionals. As we focus on community programming, we’re thinking about changing our project’s name, for branding purposes, because we’re the only university in our state doing emergency preparedness programming . We’re also working on certifications with FEMA and our state emergency management program so we can continue to increase our capacity and the impact of our work.
Chapter Three: Lessons Learned
A roadblock we encountered were the restrictions on in-person gatherings because of the pandemic. Our team members were also working at home and had to plan the event remotely. Like others, we faced challenges with internet connectivity, which informed our event planning. We pivoted to a virtual conference held across multiple days. Experiential learning is at the heart of the Extension experience. We also like to refer to this as “community learning.” We wanted to capture this in our event, so we provided a small group sharing experience at the end of the first two days of our virtual conference. These breakout sessions were facilitated by team members and volunteers from our 1890s advisory group and our department at Southern University. These sessions lasted 40 minutes, and each group had about ten people. These breakout rooms provided a place for people to share the challenges they are facing and what is working for them. We gathered best practices on engaging audiences in virtual settings, in addition to best practices around emergency preparedness and funding resources. People felt safe in these breakout rooms and were also able to share what was not working. This was a good example of community learning and the kind of engagement we hoped to achieve with conference participants.
We also learned this: Whatever the emergency, there are common principles that can be applied to preparation. Here are some of the most important things we learned:
Your team matters. We will soon complete our final team healthy survey. We’ve been blessed with an amazing team. Everyone stepped up and helped with every task, regardless of who was assigned the task. We grew and developed with the project. We’ve worked together as a team f or some time, so we know each other’s strengths and what individuals like and don’t like to do. For
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