they are right here at the slim volume but it works. i think that those 2 tools the by laws and the robert's rules parliamentary procedure would be -- going at it legally without going and saying, pointing if anythingers at people which is something you really don't want to do. >> can i say as somebody for 10 years worked in the community and didn't is a plug in any neighborhood association or organization. especially in an area where we have a lot of low income housing where they don't organize neighborhood associations and their voices are not heard in the agendas that are being shaped for that neighborhood or that community. the key for me was really just engaging with the community and not really needing the by in of the city.

or of the neighborhood associations. and being happy with saying, you know what this is an issue here and this is how we as this group plan to move about it and move on it. and working with the people that wanted to work with us. i think now at this point i'm into the formal names and having the organizations and the associations mainly because i have to be. but as a resident and as a parent and as a person that was living in the neighborhood, initially it became let's do this with this group of people. as you begin to do that it forces the neighborhood associations and the city to really begin to take notice of what you are doing. if you are saying that this is an issue and the people that are not a part of that group are saying it's not that this is the other issue now and you build that momentum and do that work it forces them to say, we have to acknowledge this group or these people and invite them to

come in. i guess you have to figure out what that issue is that's not being worked on or looked at our being acknowledges in that group and organize outside of it. >> just briefly, i agree with judy said about the by laws when created metma we set term limits. no one can hold an office for more than 2 consecutive 2 year terms. the reason is you don't want an organization to be with an individual or ideaiology. we have elections every other year. nominations in august and november meeting we have the election. every even year. except for the treasurer we want to keep the treasurer, other than that every officer must

leave after 4 years. that, i think is the key poinlt much the other thing is make individual contacts with those individuals who you think have a hidden agenda or something else not aligned with what you are doing. talk to them individually outside of the setting and invite them to attend to be positive. i think the key is again, communication and to be positive. i think if you can do that and get them along the lines of what your organization is doing you will be ahead of the game. >> i think we have time for one more question.

>> excellent. you have to repeat the question. >> the question raised is how does neighborhood association or neighborhood group come together to support the seniors as they are aging and take care of them. >> we actually have a couple senior citizen homes in our neighborhood. and we have the same exact problem. and through neighborhood watch,

on a block by block, you got to get to the block by block level. this is where safe plays a huge role. i understand how vital it could be for us. you basically find a block captain, somebody willing to organize people and get a meeting together at their home or a place that's close where 5-10 people could meet. you talk about the particular issues you have on that block. you know in your case it may be the seniors living on that block. or you know in other cases it may be people want to do garage sale. a block garage sale another great community building tool. or block party or something like thachlt neighborhood watch is a great tool to organize at a block by block level to address the specific concerns and the

seniors is it's a big concern. we are doing that on a we have a particular a couple of blocks where we identified seniors. we identified homes with pets. so in the case of an emergency there are other people on the block that know that are assigned to go check so you do the phone tree. and safe has a great process for helping you get that start. >> saw a bunch of questions. we can go a little later. you had your hand up.

>> the question is how to bring people together from different organizations to organize. >> good ahead. >> on your specific geographical location, northwest alliance is the most active organizations and they have an incredible out reach to

merchants and neighbors and all sorts of entities. personally i would first go to them. second, coalition for san francisco neighborhoods are the mother. i can't get in touch with you unless you sign in to the clip board that should be going around. please, sign it and put your name and address and phone number or not address by neighborhood in there. >> i do want to stress that the city, through the department of children youth and families funded for every big population of neighborhoods the new convener grant where they pay someone who is holding convening meetings where tla bring city

departments and neighborhood associations and residents and tenant associations together. that's a resource that people need to tap into. it's not for a set population it's for a neighborhood. that money as of july first, is out there and people are being paid to do that. this is your opportunity to may be hold them accountable for that. >> i just have to agree with cheryl, there are 2 programs one is focus on public safety issues. i would highly recommend that people tap into the safety organizationer in your neighborhood they have relationships with merchants and city departments and neighborhood groups a s ans ands they are a great resource for relationship building. the convener is based in every neighborhood and they will

focused on youth and families. these 2 programs can help your organization alot in terms of relationship building and making connections. >> that alarm was our sound we have come to the end of our session. i just want to in a couple of closing remark stress that i think it's a belief of this whole neighborhood network all of us up here. i hope throughout the day it's driven home that it begins in the community. you can out reach to the organizations and city departments and get the support you need but it come back to the community. i really want you all to leave here today with the tools and strategies you need to go forth and do the right thing in your communities and build strength and power. it's up to all of us to continue to build community and organize. i thank you all for your participation. we will stay here for a bit to

answer any other questions people have as they are leaving. thank you all very much. [applause]. i have a news letter and people have things to distribute. >> robert's rules in brief is right here.

this is the break outsession on disaster preparedness. many of you were here for the lunchtime speaker talking about the broad more district about how community building before a disaster aides in recovery. and that's a lot of what we are trying to generate through the neighborhood empowerment network. we know in san francisco it's not if we have a big disaster it's when. usgf says 62 percent of the next 25 years we will have a major disaster on the faults in the bay area. >> there was damage in san francisco because of the loma parade earthquake. that was not our earthquake. that was the earthquake of santa

cruise centered 50 mile it is south of here. that was a big quake for that area. when exerts talk about a big earthquake in san francisco they are talking about an earthquake the size of the 1906 quake and the damage after we saw. you know there are plans in place. the do a lot of planning around emergency preparedness. there is no doubt that resources will be overwhelmed in a disaster. transportation will be affected. electricity will be out. and phone service will be interrupted. hospitals will be overwhelmed. i think that's why each one of you are here today because you understand it's not about us being personally prepared we have to work with our neighbors to help each other.

there are lovely panelists we have they'll talk about ways they have prepared in their neighborhoods. we have erica the lieutenant from the fire department that runs nert. she will tell you about nert. jamie lopez who is a nert volunteer how she used nert to organize in her neighborhood. then we will have mat lynn macky from the red cross talk about using red cross resources. to be prepared for a disaster. we have michaelllow from china town disaster preparedness committee an example of an organized neighborhood they have their own disaster plan. we have judy choi from animal care and control that will talk about pet preparedness and

michael from pg and e. i will facilitate a discussion after based on the questions folks have. let's get started. >> i'm amy with the department of emergency management. thank you. >> hi. thank you all for chosing to get involved in the conversation of disaster prepared. i would like to present alth about the training program the san francisco department provides free of charge to you. there are a few people in the room that are are nert trained. anybody else? know we are appreciative for that. 1990 for the fighter department to the react which was training for citizens and how to take

care theflgz after a sdaft every how to feel empowered about what they can do after the disaster instead of waiting in line for what people could do for them. it fits nicely that 20 years later we are having a conversation that encourages what people can to. there are a lot of people that were in 89 but a lot were not. how do i talk to the person who lives next door to me? that's really a conversation that we need to have and disaster preparedness will build upon all the conversations that are be held today about how to do that. the training program the fire department is built on the foundation of personnel preparedness. that means the standards that we heard, build a kit. make a plan. i can't stress enough the importance of actually doing

that. within our training program when people leave nert we don't know if they follow through on that. i heard 17 percent of people actually consider themselves. 17 percent is low. i think the city can do better and that means us as individuals. i built my kit 2 years ago so i wouldn't speak without having to have done it and it's time to replace thingses in the kit. there is a reminder with the disaster preparedness thing. some people get pregnant and think, i have someone else to think about or their parentings get elderly. what spurs you to getting involved in the conversation the nert training is built on personal preparedness first. we give you skill necessary search and rescue, in disaster

medicine. first aid is the red cross. in team work and the component. all of that until we get a team are skills you can use individually. you can apply them to assisting the team. we focus on what it is you can do for yourself first and your neighbors. we teach incident command system. we teach about how to communicate with the fire department, which is not run to your station and knock on the door. it's about trying to maximize getting the most help to the greatest number of people when our resource are overwhelmed when all 300 of us our put in use how do you communicate what your individual needs are to the fire department. so we cover that in the training program. you get to practice the skills.

we always have advanced training opportunity. we have drills where you practice using the skills you learned in the training. we communicate by e mail. we ask you continue with some of the skills every 2 years to renew and stay with the program. in keeping with this summit, nert is a community building program. it's neighbors reaching out to each other. once you graduate from the program it's about you staying involved in your community. even if it's an e mail group with your neighborhood xhurnting with each other what the plans are. staying in touch with each other much the fire department will support the teams hopefully next week supplying equipment you can respond with with. with fliers you can hand out. the team aspect of nert really is the community.

keep that in mind today as we are all talking. >> jamie. >> hi. i'm jamie lopez. i'm the nert coordinator for hay hayes valley. before i start off on my rant i wanted to acknowledge most of what i will talk about was built and developed with a neighboring coordinator in the lower hate who was at the morning session but not here today. anything i say give her equal credit for what works and doesn't work. so i'm going to start from the assumption that you have some training or you will begin out reach in your neighborhood. for us where that started was at

a basis of 0. there was no active coordinator in the neighborhood at the time. we decided to take it on. so our first priority was justifying a way of getting the information out. how do we connect with people in the neighborhood? where are the places we can go? what are the resources that already exist? we started with the farmers market. getting a free table from the guy who organized it and giving out information. that lead to other connections you meet people from log organizations and faith based and community groups all the different organizations whatever neighborhood has unique to itself where people talk and associate. that lead to a domino effect of the areas necessary which we could go out, talk to people and sort of spread the message of

preparedness and also community the different resources that are available throughout the city. we developed program it is that were specific to our neighborhood. through the neighborhood association, through community based organization and through faith based organizations we talked to people. found their interests. found how they were chartd and what kind of information they needed to go ahead and start getting their memberships prepared. and the first thing we did because we are nert is encourage the nert training. the nert training works because it trains you to take care of yourself and can your family and be engaged with a wider neighborhood response to a disaster that happens in the city. and second of all, we encourage people to prepare a disaster kit. i'm sure you heard a lot but the buzz word is mitigation.

there is a good reason because it's totally true. every person who has a kit for themselves and family mitigates the impact on themselves and their family and the resources in the neighborhood and the city and subsequent to a disaster it mitigates the impact on the city and how well we recover. it's an important thing that even if you can't get trained with the red cross or nert or other resource make sure you have a kit for yourself and family and a communication plan of how you will get in touch with each other after or days after or whatever. the next thing we did was we had meetings with erica and our local police chief kevin dylan and talked about safety issueses. we said, what are the thipgs we need to know about what not just the fire department needs and

doesn't need after a disaster but how to support you what we can rely on you for or not rely on you for. we don't know if we will be there for you. through those discussions we realized that we needed to come up with a decentralized plan. we developed the block captain program. one nert and one faith person trained on every block. it's someone who's familiar to you who will knock on your door and know that there is a senior that lives in there and speaks russian. neither of the people may need assistance. say the senior who speaks russian will feel isolated and

look for a familiar face in all the chaos and the person who uses the wheel chair may need someone to help them get their battery charged after the event. decentralizing it making so everyone can contribute. you probably know the neighborhood and know the people who don't belong in the neighborhood and wandering after the event. it's exploiting a san francisco characteristic which is neighbor to neighbor interest and support and things like that. one of the other questions we were asked to respond to was to talk about the lessons we have learned in this organizing. and over the past couple of years, there's 2 things that have come up for me most often. one, play well together. which means there's many different organizations that are

going to have available resources, have different training resources and yes , there will be over lap but everybody brings something unique to the table. play well and work well and don't waste your time and energy trying to reinvent the wheel. if i want shelter training i will go to the red cross if i want search and rescue i will go to nert but i will not make the different people do the same things for me at the same time much the other thing is to partner. partner, partner. take advantage of the resources already established in the neighborhood. a lot of the groups are chartered to have a disaster sponse plan but may be they

don't have the information or may be they need somebody to community with when they talk to their constituency or members about that thing. the key thing to remember is that none of this will be done in isolation. that's good about the whole event today is that all of the things will be interdependent. emergencies have a way of amplifying what already exists in your neighborhood. if you have safety issues. strength and weaknesses they will be more pronounced the good and the bad after a disaster hits. you can't look at it as the neighborhood association is my link to the constituency to get people nert or red cross trained. they are dealing with the safety issues in the neighborhood and you want to be informed about them so you can respond and prepare for them and work with the neighborhood associations to

have further management planned if you can call it that. you don't know what will happen. some response that you hope to effect after the disaster. and at the same time, too, the other thing is those resources are also the people in those neighborhood organizations community based organizations et cetera, those people are people that people in the neighborhood are already look to as leaders. and so after disasters this is back to the chaos in the comfort zone. they will look at the people for direction. you want to make sure our information and message gets across to the people so they are able to educate, lead and manage and help you and support you once you are trying to deal with an issue after it happens. so -- >> my name is mad lynn macky

i'm with the american red cross. i have been on staff with the red cross for 4 months. i have been a volunteer for over 5 years. and i started with the red cross because like many of you during that dreadful day in september of 2001 i was in front of my tv and feeling helpless and hopeless. i said if something happen indeed my community i didn't want to feel that way. i wanted to go out and lend a hand and be able to help and make a difference. i knew i needed training. what they were saying was everyone was showing up to the disaster site but they were getting put aside because they didn't have the skills. i went to the red cross and received disaster training. i got training in shelter and case management and said i'm ready for the big