Field-Tested Training Material for Neighborhood Emergency Response Group Leaders

IRVINE, Calif. - May 8, 2017 - PRLog -- Maintaining an active volunteer emergency response group is a challenge. Even trained CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) members lose interest after a while.

Neighborhood group leaders now have a new tool to make their job easier.

A second volume of "CERT Meeting Ideas" has just been published by CERT grad and community leader Virginia Nicols. Like the first volume, this collection of meeting plans comes from Nicols' 15 years of working in her own community.

"These are meetings designed to work with any volunteers, not just those who've gone through formal training," says Nicols. "We try to keep each meeting upbeat and engaging for people at all skill levels, while still adding valuable content."

The book starts with nine "successful meeting" guidelines. Then it goes on to describe in great detail a year's worth of suggested meeting agendas. For each meeting, Nicols provides

n  Title

n  Objective

n  Procedure

n  Materials needed

n  Comments

Most individual agendas include samples of meeting materials – quizzes, lists – and several also include cautions or warnings "based on experience!" Volume II has a new resource section with checklists and room seating diagrams.

The book is downloadable from the internet as a pdf, available for purchase at http://emergencyplanguide.org/more-cert-meeting-ideas/.