By Delia Husband, FEMA Region 2, External Affairs
Maintaining relationships is crucial to meeting current and future emergency threats.
In late September, Region 2 National Preparedness Division (NPD) hosted their recent installment of its Higher Education Roundtable series.
The focus of this discussion centered on Resilience and Engagement Hubs. The hybrid event, held at the Columbia Climate School, offered insightful conversation on the huge humanitarian climate change and the research needed to combat the disadvantaged concerns.
The discussion centered around “placed based engagement, where assisting communities in securing funding opportunities was of utmost importance,” Jason Rivera, John Jay College, emphasized that leveraging social and huma interaction across all phases of emergency management and during “blue skies” was critical to meeting organizational goals.
Lauden Behorouz-Ghayebi, of Columbia University, spoke about her observations and how people and multi-stakeholders offer three modes of operation, including normal, disruption and recovery. Also discussed, was how BRIC or HMGP programs can offer up additional support.
Virtual presenter, GEOS institute, Kim Adams, added to the conversation on “Climate Ready America,” and how this national framework can ensure the consistency of climate change adaptation can add to the federal and local level of grassroots work. Sharing information across the country can strengthen engagement to leverage social vulnerability indices and opportunities for mitigation.
Dr. Lucia Velottir, John Jay College, spoke about service -learning partners and disaster resilience
across communities. With the benefits of building a community culture of preparedness coupled with a whole community approach. The equity lens contains a lot of factors including creatable partnerships.
Julie Nucci shared a poignant story about her village and her home. As Village of Oswego resident, she told her story of how disaster-prone Oswego is, and how her historic home is part of an under-served community in desperate need of seeking climate adaptation. Living in picturesque town can be deceiving … when you know that disaster awaits. Environmental justice and socially just approaches can help.
The Information Technology Disaster Resource Center is an additional resource that serves as an nationwide, volunteer-driven and rapidly deployment resource. This organization provides relationships at the ground level and is a trusted resource to emergency management agencies.
The Q and A portion of the discussion culminated with Climate Corps and FEMA Corps opportunities and a call for grant writing and project management opportunities. These goals are of utmost importance and are critical to partnership engagement.
FEMA Region 2’s National Preparedness Division will continue to engage all levels of government, academia, private sector, and subject matter experts through a series of thematic roundtable discussions to not only achieve agency objectives but to create a better-informed emergency management community.