Vision: Comprehensively resilient and prepared American communities to ensure the safety, security, quality, and future of national life.
Goal: Inspire a culture change where preparedness is the social norm.
Objectives:
- Leverage community colleges to spearhead and sustain a community-based national culture of continuous innovation and resilience-based preparedness.
- Create community-based preparedness and resilience coalitions.
- Educate community members to identify local hazards, as well as mitigation, prevention, preparedness, and mitigation strategies.
- Instill a shared purpose, responsibility, trust, and action through community-based and nationwide “information exchange.”
- Champion continuous community preparedness assessments (the American Resilience Assessment) using operationally proven resilience-based mindsets, metrics, methodologies, and technologies.
Tactical Plan: Equip the connected community college with the knowledge, tools, and abilities to Envision, Evaluate, Empower, Engage, and Evolve community preparedness and resilience actions.
Envision: Build a common, resilience-based preparedness purpose by
- Creating a shared vision
- Building value for others
- Identifying and sharing success stories
Evaluate: Clarify local threats, direction, and priorities by
- Understanding local hazards, mitigation strategies, and alternative funding
- Defining preparedness and resilience objectives
- Establishing community preparedness priorities
Empower: Develop local preparedness capacity by
- Connecting with key community leaders
- Developing a work and communication process
- Developing local preparedness competencies
Engage: Inspire shared commitment by
- Modeling preparedness actions
- Recognizing contributions furthering goal attainment
- Fostering teamwork
Evolve: Achieve measurable results by
- Setting specific goals and timelines
- Identifying and tracking metrics
- Providing feedback and improvement strategies
Activity is not accomplishment, process is not progress, iteration is not innovation, and rhetoric is not results. Success must be measured “on the ground.” Proof of a lesson learned is positive change – not a “new normal” but rather a culture where preparedness and security are the social norm.
A parting thought . . . While the right time to do the right thing is always now, a case can be made that when it comes to community and national preparedness, the hour markers on the clock should read: YESTERDAY. Education expands minds, changes lives, empowers individuals, and transfers knowledge from generation to generation. We invite you to join us in advancing APSI from a critical infrastructure community and national preparedness imperative to an American reality!
