Call for Kids Prepare America Contest Entries – Deadline Friday, November 30th

The deadline is quickly approaching! Get your Student Contest and Ideas that Worked! entries in by Friday, November 30th! The Home Safety Council wants to know how you helped families and communities prepare for disasters! YOU can win prizes as an educator or as a student! Be sure to enter this week and you could be one of the ten Grand Prize Student Winners from across the nation who will be selected to travel to Washington, DC for an awards dinner on June 5, 2008!

Click here for Contest Information and Educational materials!

Click here to submit your Ideas that Worked!

Play the New Get Ready with Freddie! Interactive Game!

Are you ready for an emergency? Play the new Get Ready with Freddie! interactive game, which helps kids learn how to prepare for emergencies at home! The game debuted itself on the Kids Prepare America Web site this September. Each level allows kids help Freddie shine his light around the room to find all the items needed for a “Ready-to-Go” kit or a “Ready-to-Stay” kit before time runs out.

Click here to play!

Kids Prepare America Contest: In the News

The word continues to spread about the Kids Prepare America Contest - encouraging communities and schools to get their children involved in preparing for disasters. See the latest news story from the Orange County Register below:

Click here to read the story!

Check Out Other Weekly Reader Education Programs!

If you enjoyed the Get Ready with Freddie! Program, check out other programs offered by the Home Safety Council and Weekly Reader! Each program helps teach children how to spot and prevent home dangers – some focus specifically on fire safety so children know the importance of preventing and planning for a home fire. Additional programs include:

• Safety Rangers Stay Away from Fire Dangers – Grade: Preschool
• Safety Rangers Spot Dangers – Grade: K-3rd
• Safety Rangers Say No to Dangers – Grade: K-3rd
• Fire Safety Rangers Know the Drill – Grade: 2nd
• Fire Science – Grade: Middle School

Click here to find all of the Home Safety Council and Weekly Reader’s Educational Programs!

Join the Home Safety Council’s Expert Network – It’s Free!

Firefighters, public health educators and other fire and life safety advocates from around the country are joining the Expert Network to benefit from high quality home injury prevention education tools and services. Downloadable, customizable teaching tools for people of every age are available to members, on demand, at no cost.

Members of the Expert Network have access to selected hard copy educational materials sent through the mail. The majority of these materials are free -- you just pre-pay the shipping and handling costs. Quantities of materials are also available to members for a modest production fee.

• Click here for more information and to sign-up!

Disaster Preparedness and the Home Safety Council’s Get Ready with Freddie! Program Webinar

In August, the Home Safety Council (HSC) hosted a Webinar on disaster preparedness and HSC’s educational preparedness program – Get Ready with Freddie!. The Webinar covered the latest disaster preparedness research, tips on engaging diverse audiences and the most effective methods to get community members involved in being prepared.

The presentation also highlighted HSC’s innovative disaster preparedness program for kids – Get Ready with Freddie! and offered ideas on how to implement it in schools and communities nationwide.

• Click here to view the Webinar and download the discussed resources.

Helping People Prepare for Disasters

As a part of HSCs monthly online Bottom Line column, Dr. Rocky Lopes, Manager of Homeland Security with the National Association of Counties, discusses the challenges faced by those involved in community outreach for disaster preparedness and tips on how to get people more engaged.

This monthly column features safety experts from across the country and focuses on a variety of safety topics. Previous columns include: “You Can Teach Fire Safety to Adults who Can’t Read,” “Fire Prevention and Public Health Partnerships,” “Fire Safety Solutions for People with Disabilities” and more!

• Click here to read the column from Dr. Rocky Lopes

New Research Shows Families Are Not Prepared for Disasters

New research commissioned by the national nonprofit Home Safety Council (HSC) finds that while a majority of mothers have talked with their children about preparing for emergencies, very few have taken action to ensure that their family is prepared to respond in the event of an emergency.

The survey polled mothers and their children ages 6 to 11 and found that while nearly 60 percent of mothers feel their families are prepared for an emergency situation, less than one-third have developed and discussed a family communication plan. Alarmingly, even fewer families have assembled readiness kits. The children surveyed echo the same sentiment with 64 percent saying they think their family is prepared for an emergency, but only 27 percent reporting that their family has developed and discussed a communication plan or assembled readiness kits to use in an emergency situation.

• Click here to read more about the results of the survey

Are You In Need of Some Idea Starters?

Review the ideas below and adapt them for your classroom or community, or use them to develop your own ideas. Be sure to tell us your Ideas that Worked so that we know how YOU helped to get your students and community ready for emergencies.

• Create "Ready" Kits for the Community: As a community service project, have your students work together to assemble Ready-to-Go and Ready-to-Stay kits that can be donated to people in the community who may be in need of the supplies. Review the components of the kits as a class, and then host a fundraiser and use the proceeds to purchase the items needed for the kits. Or if possible, ask students and their families to donate these items as part of the project. This could be a school-wide project. Once the kits are assembled, contact your local fire department, emergency management office, or American Red Cross Chapter so they can help you deliver the kits to people who may need them.

• Families Getting Ready: Host a family event and invite members of the community to speak to families about possible natural disasters that may affect your area, and provide additional tips on how families can prepare themselves for such things. Have your students create flyers to announce the event and program schedules to describe the guest speakers.

• We're Ready: To help motivate students and families to prepare their kits and to develop communication plans, create a large bar graph for the cafeteria, library, or hallway. The name of each teacher in the school should appear on the horizontal axis. The vertical axis will count the students. Provide all the teachers in your school with copies of the Get Ready with Freddie! reproducible pages to send home. In addition, create a template for each family with check-off boxes and lines for the student and parent signatures.
  
  The check-off list could be as simple as:
  o My family discussed emergency preparedness.
  o My family created a communication plan.
  o My family created (or started to organize) a Ready-to-Go kit.
  o My family created (or started to organize) a Ready-to-Stay kit.
  When a student brings the paper back to school checked off and signed, he/she gets to add his/her name to the bar graph above his/her teacher name. The goal is to get every name on the graph. If requesting families to complete both kits and the communication plan may be too difficult, start with asking them to complete their communication plans.

The Latest in Home Safety Council News

Learn more about other Home Safety Council initiatives including the Great Safety Adventure®, a traveling educational exhibit for children. The link below highlights the latest Home Safety Council news and projects.

• HSC Headlines

Kids Prepare America Contest: In the News

The word has quickly spread about the Kids Prepare America Contest - encouraging communities and schools to get their children involved in preparing for disasters. See the latest news stories about the contest below:

• “Would Your Family Survive a Natural Disaster?” - iVillage.com
• “September is National Preparedness Month" - Parents Express Magazine
• “Disaster Preparation: Is Your Family Ready?” - BlogHer.com

Help Kids Prepare America!

Every year, we see examples of how natural disasters and emergency situations affect communities. Yet according to a recent survey*, 54 percent of respondents admit they choose not to be more prepared because they do not believe a disaster will affect them personally. 44 percent of people report they have not done more to prepare for a disaster because they do not know what to do. If families across America are to be ready when the next disaster strikes, they will need some help.

To support this effort, we at the Home Safety Council, teamed up with Weekly Reader Custom Publishing to create Get Ready with Freddie!, a free educational program for 3rd and 4th grade students to help families plan their own responses for emergency situations. HSC has distributed the FREE program to every U.S. elementary school with a 3rd and/or 4th grade classroom as well as to community educators nationwide.

We want you to get involved! Since HSC believes in fostering strong school and community connections, we invite teachers and community educators to work together in helping Kids Prepare America!

Please click below to learn more about program elements:

• Get Ready with Freddie!
• The Kids Prepare America Contest
• Ideas that Worked! Contest

By engaging children and their families in this fun, educational effort, you can help ensure that everyone is better prepared to cope when disaster strikes. Thank you very much for your support and GOOD LUCK! Please share your comments and check this blog regularly for more Kids Prepare America information!