Connect with your neighborhood leaders, learn about ‘Be 2 Weeks Ready’ in August

Presenter: Save the dates: Tuesday, Aug. 18 and Thursday, Aug. 20 for ‘Be 2 Weeks Ready–The Local Edition.’ From the Jefferson Westside and Neighborhood Leaders Council preparedness committees, Sandra Bishop:

Sandra Bishop (NLC and JWN preparedness committees): My name is Sandra Bishop. The Neighborhood Leaders Council is a group of neighborhood leaders (surprise!) that meet once a month. So there’s a representative from each of the active, city-recognized neighborhood associations in town. 

And so, recently, the Neighborhood Leaders Council has formed a coalition with the Interfaith EarthKeepers, and this is a group of 12 faith congregations, so that’s pretty exciting. And we’re offering a ‘Be 2 Weeks Ready’ training in August.

And to give a little bit of background, the ‘Be 2 Weeks Ready’ training is a very sophisticated curriculum that the state of Oregon Department of Emergency Management put together, and they have it on their website. You can look up, there’s eight units, you can look at the materials.

But unless you go through one of the trainings that is led by someone who is actually prepared and trained to be a trainer for this material, you don’t—I find that I didn’t—get that much out of it by just reading it online.

So we have been trying for several years at the neighborhood levels to get this training offered in Eugene. The city of Eugene was going to do it. They decided not to do it. But we are very lucky. We have several people who are trained to present the material here in Eugene.

The main presenter is Dawn Scott, and she has been very well trained, very well versed in the materials, and she’s a retired adult education person. Dawn and some of the other people that have recently been trained have a lot of experience with curriculum materials.

And the difference between reading the material yourself and kind of slogging through it—and the dynamic give-and-take of a presentation from someone at the level of skill that Dawn has—is drastically different. She’s really good at interaction and getting people involved. And so that’ll be really good. 

So this is going to happen on Aug. 18 and Aug. 20, 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., and it’s a little bit unusual in that we’re going to condense a lot of material into six hours, which is a rare opportunity.

And if things go well, it will be a mixed group of people from the local congregation, as well as people from the neighborhoods throughout the city. 

This first training is being held at the Methodist Church at 13th and Olive (the United Methodist Church). We’re very excited that the neighborhoods and the faith community  congregations are getting together.

And, you know, we’ll see how it goes—it is the middle of summer, some people are gone. But we’re hoping to get a small, robust, energetic group of people together to start the networking that naturally falls out of a training like this.

And if you take the training, you don’t need to download anything because you will end up with a printed copy of the bound workbook. And that has all the material from the eight units in it. 

If you want to take it back to your neighborhood group or to any other group and go through some of the exercises, it has all the exercises in it you could play around with.

And we’ll also have some fun things. We’ll be giving away some actual preparedness equipment. There’ll be an opportunity to have a solar oven that’s in a pizza box. Things like that. There’s a in-a-bucket little washing machine if you’re confined at home for any length of time without the regular water and electricity.

So it’s going to be fun. And one of the wonderful things that makes this ‘Be 2 Weeks Ready’ training unique is that it’s going to be not only condensed, but it’s going to be tailored to the local area. For instance, we will highlight the local hazards—because if you just look at the state materials, they’re more general. They don’t tell you what hazards are locally. 

So we’ll have a lot of that and one of the things that really enhances being able to relax and get to know each other is food. And so, so we’ll definitely have that. 

It’s kind of popular talking about preparedness, but I think that what I’ve come to over the last year or two where I’ve really, really tried to get to the bottom of it, what’s needed and what’s most beneficial—for people in neighborhoods, for people in faith communities, any kind of community structure—what’s needed?

Well, the main thing is the networking because some people have certain information or certain skills. And so if you get in a network with people, then you can play off each other.

And that’s a big part of the collaboration that we’re starting between the Neighborhood Leaders Council Preparedness Committee and the Interfaith EarthKeepers, hopefully, that we will continue to do these kinds of programs.

And then in future, we’d like to match up the neighborhood groups more closely with a particular church or other type of facility or Buddhist center that is doing these trainings so that we get that neighborhood synergy going too. 

Presenter: She said the training is open to everyone, with the goal of connecting with your community’s preparedness group. You can also register by email. Sandra Bishop:

Sandra Bishop (NLC and JWN preparedness committees): This is going to be in-person only. It’s not going to be a Zoom option. So we need your name, email, physical address (or you could just say what street), and then your telephone number in case you have to get a hold of you if there’s any changes. 

And then if you know what neighborhood group you’re in, that would be great to have that, but it’s not necessary at this point.  Just go ahead and register: B2WREugene@gmail.com.

And we want to encourage the people serving on neighborhood boards or people serving on their neighborhood preparedness committees. Those are our main people that we want to get there because they are really the leaders in their neighborhoods.

But we decided to go ahead and allow those leaders to invite people from their neighborhood. So, if you are interested in coming to this training, you need to get a hold of the neighborhood group in your area if you can. 

Presenter: Sandra said after budget cuts at the city, the neighborhood associations stepped up to help. 

Sandra Bishop (NLC and JWN preparedness committees): We have emergency management staff at the city of Eugene. We have emergency management staff at Lane County. And sometimes people assume that those staff people or the city or the county is somehow going to step in and take care of everything.

But I think we have to be cognizant of the fact that there’s a lot of public infrastructure that has to be the main consideration of those county and city folks. 

If you want to pay more taxes, we might have more emergency preparedness and disaster preparedness staff that can work directly with us in the neighborhoods and in the communities. But that’s not happening right now.

For instance, the city in the past has said they would present the ‘Be 2 Weeks Ready’ program. They don’t have the real capacity to do that at this point. But I think this is a really good start for the neighborhoods and the faith communities to be saying, ‘Okay, we’re going to step up. We’re going to help to offer this material and get it out, permeate the community with it. And then that will help the city and county.’

Presenter: She said  nearby neighbors will play a critical role in caring for one another immediately following an emergency. Sandra Bishop:

Sandra Bishop (NLC and JWN preparedness committees): I heard the former emergency manager from Lane County, Tiffany Brown—she was very dynamic, very good—said, ‘Well, you have to understand if there is an event such as a big earthquake or something that is communitywide, the first responders that would usually come when you call 911 are going to be victims themselves.’

So I think part of it is just trying to get people to the point where we are not liabilities. In a big emergency or disaster, you’re either going to be of service to your family and people in your neighborhood in the immediate aftermath, or you’re going to be a liability that they have to take care of.

So we’re preparing ourselves so that we can do whatever small steps it takes in the aftermath of a big event, to not be that person that has to be taken care of, but hopefully be of service to the community.

There is a resiliency center now in the Jefferson Westside area, and that is the Black Cultural Center. And during the ice storm, especially, it was a place where people could come and at least charge their phones. (They didn’t have branches that had taken out wires, and so some people in Eugene didn’t have power. Some people did, some people didn’t.)

But that’s definitely a resiliency center that has grown and been built.  And I’m very encouraged that there are several churches that are looking at how they can do more to become resiliency hubs.

The formal level of that, where you have to have certain facilities like showers and things, and then there’s the informal level where you can just start at a less demanding level, to let people know that, ‘If there’s a disaster, here’s the kind of things we can provide.’

Presenter: That’s Sandra Bishop announcing a collaboration between neighborhood leaders and the Interfaith EarthKeepers. They’ll be bringing you the local edition of a state preparedness program, ‘Be 2 Weeks Ready.’

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