[Welcome / Introduction]
Amy Sebring: Good morning/afternoon everyone and welcome to
EMForum.org. I am Amy Sebring and will serve as your Host and Moderator
today and we are very glad you could join us.
Today’s topic is entitled “Who Depends on You? A Public Education
Campaign To Move People From Intention to Action.” This campaign
recently won an award from IAEM and was also nominated for a Washington
State Cities of Excellence Award. We hope this information will be
of benefit to you in your own outreach efforts.
[Slide 1]
Now it is my great pleasure to introduce today’s speaker: Mary
Schoenfeldt serves as Public Education Coordinator for the City of
Everett, Washington Office of Emergency Management and she has been in
the field of Emergency Management and Public Education for over 25
years. Among her many activities, she also developed and taught Disaster
Psychology courses in two Emergency Management/Homeland Security degree
programs, and has traveled internationally to teach on a variety of
topics.
Please see today’s Background Page for further biographical details and
links to related resources, including some downloads that Mary will
mention today.
Welcome Mary, and thank you again for taking the time to be with us
today. I now turn the floor over to you to start us off please.
[Presentation]
[Slide 1]
Mary Schoenfeldt: Thank you, Amy and thanks for you for
moderating today. Also, thank you to EM Forum and all of you who
have joined us. As Amy read in my bio you can see I am pretty
fascinated with human behavior and why we do things and why we don’t do
things. Which is why doing public education in an emergency
management division keeps me awake at night in an excited way to try to
figure out how to motivate people.
Public education is a difficult task. Those of us who do this know
it is very difficult to motivate someone to do something unpleasant
that they may or may not ever need. What we need to do is to move
people from awareness to intention.
[Slide 2]
We are bombarded with messages to the point that we actually stop
listening. My daughter lives near a nuclear storage site in
another part of Washington State. When we developed this “Who
Depends on You” campaign I was pretty excited when I heard that a radio
ad would be playing in her area. I called her to be a proud mom
and wanting her to be a proud daughter—I called her and asked her if she
had heard it.
Her response to me surprised me. What she said was, “Mom, we get
so many of those I don’t even listen to them anymore.” How many of
you have kids who just simply tune you out? It’s the same
challenge—trying to get people to hear the message that is going to make
a difference.
[Slide 3]
Let’s look at the definition—definitions between motivation and
education. We call our field public education but what we really
need to be doing is really motivating people. Education is
passive. Motivation is much more active than that.
[Slide 4]
My guess is that many of you listening in know who Dennis Milleti
is. He is considered to be the expert in social science when it
comes to preparedness education. Dennis says that if we only give
information but we don’t move people from awareness to intention to
action that when the big one hits we are going to have a lot of very
educated dead people.
[Slide 5]
I agree with Dennis. If knowledge were enough we’d all eat
vegetables, cut down on salt, stay away from fatty foods, get enough
sleep, exercise regularly, drive the speed limit, not work too much,
take our vacations, stay home when we’re sick and wash our hands. Hmm,
knowledge doesn’t do it. Let’s look at motivation and see where we
are.
[Slide 6]
If knowledge were enough we would do all the things that we hear about
that we know are best for us. Let’s talk about motivation. I
don’t believe I am a lot different from other people in the world and
my guess is that you aren’t either. When I’m looking at public
education I try to think of what makes a difference and motivates me
personally.
Let me ask you a question. Why did you get up this morning?
The alarm went off and you jumped out of bed with excitement yelling,
“Yippee! I can’t wait for another day of listening to a webinar on a set
of speakers that crackle and try to pay attention to my computer screen
when I have a long list of other things to do … listening to someone
speak about something I already know something about ….and might even be
able to do a better job of presenting so I hope it is at best
interesting and but know that at worse it might be very boring.”
[Slide 7]
If that is how you woke up this morning, I think you are an unusual
person and should probably take your temperature and go back to
bed. That is not why we do it.
[Slide 8]
Why did you join us today? What motivated you to spend your time
with us? Was it responsibility to yourself, responsibility to
others, guilt, accountability, responsibility, or anticipation of a good
outcome? Each one of us has our own answer to that. There
is something that motivates us.
[Slide 9]
What is it? What gets your attention? What moves you from good intentions to action—from point A to point B?
[Slide 10]
There are some successful industries out there that I am intrigued by
when I am thinking about public education and how to motivate people to
do what it is that I know is in their best interest. Some of those
successful industries are the insurance industry—I personally really
dislike writing a check for insurance every month, yet I do it. I
have been motivated to do that. We can learn from that.
Dental hygiene is another successful industry. We do a good job of
taking care of our teeth in a preventive measure and the same with
preventative medicine. Car maintenance and the Skil Corporation
are listed on the slide. The Skil Corporation is one that has
fascinated me for years because they sell drills and saws.
The way they marketed that is they really didn’t sell drills—they really
sold holes. They sold the solution to the problem—not the problem
or the tool. I think there are things we can learn from those
kinds of industries. When we as a country and as a world were
looking at the H1N1 flu—hand washing—I started thinking after that what
the motivation was that had everyone washing their hands. Again,
we can learn from this as we are looking at public education campaigns
for our emergency preparedness message.
[Slide 11]
The motivator for H1N1, at least in my experience, was peer
pressure. Everyone else is doing it and if I don’t wash or
sanitize my hands, my thought process is, “This is good for me but even
more important is people will notice if I am not.” There were
frequent media reminders. It was a pretty consistent message that
included information but also included personal stories so we could
connect with the people who were doing the same things we were doing.
There were signs in public places specifically asking us to do
something. It was very specific, “Please use hand sanitizer before
you come into this office space. Make sure you cover your
cough.” There were very specific kinds of messages.
There was an education about the risk—what will happen if I don’t.
The message was simple and visual. These are all things we can
learn from.
[Slide 12]
Convincing people to do something to prevent something they believe
might never, even happen is a difficult thing. Public education is
tough. People don’t change easily.
[Slide 13]
If we look at what motivates people and there are professional marketers
who study this extensively and know how to get us to buy their
products—some of the persuasive motivators are: image—what will people
think of me? Peer pressure—are my friends doing it? Lastly
on this list is responsibility—am I doing something only because I need
to do it or am I responsible for something or someone else?
[Slide 14]
The “Who Depends on You—Are You Prepared for Disaster” campaign is based
on that motivator of responsibility. It doesn’t say to me
personally, “Are you able to take care of yourself?” My answer
might be, “Yes, I am.”
It really asks me, “Who are those other people in the world that look to
me?” That hooks into my sense of responsibility. It also
makes me feel bigger, tougher and stronger in some ways.
[Slide 15]
The “Who Depends on You” campaign engages the audience in a questioning
process. It allows us to have some discussion about
dependency. That is not an easy subject. I don’t want to
think I am dependent on someone else. That flies in the face of my
feeling competent and adequate sometimes.
We have found out and have been pleasantly surprised that it can be used
in any setting. I have yet to find any setting that we can’t
reframe the message where “who depends on you—are you prepared for
disaster” doesn’t fit. It is interactive. The audience
cannot answer simply a yes or a no.
If we use the message, “Are you prepared?”, then they can say yes or no
and then go on. “Who depends on you?” is a different type of
questions and it requires thought rather than a quick answer.
[Slide 16]
Here is some of the design and some of the overall strategy we began
this campaign with. We looked at target markets. By
target markets we mean deciding who we are messaging to and then very
specifically designing to that population if you will. Branding is
where we can all look at the golden arches and we know what company
that is. We can fill in the blanks.
The message doesn’t have to be written and we don’t have to read it to
know what that is. That is branding. The design was to be
able to frame all public education messages and we have been pleasantly
surprised in that we have yet to find a population that we cannot
reframe it. It is designed to get intention.
It is designed to be the “why”. The “what” message comes later—the
specific messages and that is a continuing phase of this
campaign. The purpose is to nudge people to take some kind of
action.
[Slide 17]
There is a lot of public education theory out there. I referenced
Dennis Milleti earlier. There is other research done by an
organization called the Hebert Research Foundation. Then there is
the Wisdom of Petra Fuzzbucket. Let me tell you who Petra
Fuzzbucket is and I’ll tell you about my process about public education.
[Slide 18]
When I was thinking that I’m not that unique or that much different from
other people, why is it that I’m not prepared? I certainly know
better. My thought process was that I only have to be concerned
about myself. I can take care of myself. My kids are going
to take care of my grandkids. I’ll do it later.
What got my attention was walking up the driveway one day with my dog
that had been a rescue dog that came into my life and her name was
Petra. As we were walking up the driveway she was looking up at me
with adoring eyes as only a dog can do and I realized that if something
happened to me and I was not as prepared as I could or should be, who
is going to take care of her?
Then I realized that I am much more willing to do something for someone
else whether they are a human person or fur person than I am for
myself. The example I give when I give presentations is that I may
be driving home from work after a long day and I realize I am out of
liquid French vanilla creamer for my coffee for the next morning.
I’ll go through this whole process in my head about whether or not I am
going to stop and buy it. Most likely I will decide that I’m too tired
and there is powdered creamer at home and I’ll get by. But if I am
driving home and I realize that Petra is out of what we call bedtime
cookies, which is her snack before we go to bed, I am going to stop and
do that for her. I am much more likely to do something for someone
else.
That is the theory of responsibility for someone else.
[Slide 19]
When we are looking at target markets to go back to what we have learned
from other industries, what we want to do is think about what groups we
want to reach. Is it families with young children? Is it
pet owners? Is it rural families? Whatever your market
is—and then we design our method and our message to reach that
particular population.
[Slide 20]
Pet owners, we have discovered through some studying and research on who
depends on you, that people at least in our area are more prepared to
take care of pets than they are of even their own children as far as
having some kind of a disaster plan and kit in place. So by
targeting pet owners with some very specific kinds of giveaways and
messaging, we can get the “who depends on you” out there to them.
[Slide 21]
Target marketing—key questions to answers that we want to answer as we
are doing this and what matters to them. It is not what we want
them to hear but what they need to hear. How do they get
information so that our marketing delivery system changes depends on how
a particular segment of our population might get information—is it only
through social media?
If we’re doing billboards and they are getting their messages through
social media, we are missing them. What images are most appealing
and least appealing? There are some we simply wouldn’t use.
What do we want to avoid in this group when we are marketing to them?
[Slide 22]
Looking at this campaign and what we have done in this area and actually
we have shared this campaign around the country. I am excited
that we are sharing it even more now. Some of the outcomes we have
seen in the Puget Sound area in Washington is we have done a lot of bus
signs, a lot of billboards and we’ve done all of our city employee
training around the message of “who depends on you”.
We are talking about not only does the employer and our city is somebody
that is depending on our employee; but so are the citizens, families
and neighbors. We can reframe it around any population. We
have done a lot of handouts and brochures. In a few more slides I
will show you where you can get those for your use.
We have used it to bridge conversations with local veterinarian
hospitals, nursing homes, daycares, assisted living. We have done
posters in both public and private places. We have done a number
of presentations where we have used “who depends on you” as the frame.
[Slide 23 - 26]
What I’m doing now is showing you some of the ads and things that have been available and are available to you.
[Slide 27]
I say when I do presentations that I frame it in a game. I’m not
going to show you the whole game by any means but I’m going to show you
the first couple of slides and the last couple of slides of the
game. We start the game with “How prepared are you?”
[Slide 28]
We ask a series of questions that always starts with “Who depends on
you?” and then it goes through the list. The answer pops up that
maybe it is all of the above.
[Slide 29]
The second question that I am showing for you is “Each person should be
prepared for how many days of an emergency—seven, thirteen, one,
three?” The answer I have in the slide presentation in the slide
presentation is three because it gives me the opportunity to have that
discussion about three being the absolute minimum.
We are actually changing in the emergency management world what our
recommendations are and it gives me a place to do that. You can
customize this to whatever the message is you are trying to get across.
[Slide 30]
In this item there is a little bit of humor. “Which item does not
belong in your emergency kit?” The answer is dust bunnies.
It gives me another place to have a conversation with them.
[Slide 31]
There is one here I show about water.
[Slide 32]
This slide you are seeing is the blah, blah, blah and we go on to the end of the game.
[Slide 33]
But the game always ends with a couple of final questions.
[Slide 34]
One of those is the question again—“Who depends on you?” This time
it is directed back to them and it says that only you can answer.
I can’t answer that for you. You know who it is that is depending
on you.
[Slide 35]
The next one is—“What can you do today?” It is asking them to take
very specific action, not just the education but actually motivating
them to take action. Again, the answer is that you have to
decide. It is not my place to tell you what it is I want you to
do. You make that decision.
[Slide 36]
The final question is—“Will you do that for me?” According to the
game there is only one option really, and that is, “Yes, I will”.
[Slide 37]
Another motivator we have found is that accountability is a huge
motivator. Will you do that for me? Research tells us
that this one simple question greatly increases the number of people who
will follow through, in other words, move from that position of
intention to action. Once again it is responsible to someone else and it
is even better if we can get them to say, “Yes, I will do XYZ” to
someone they know—it increases the chances.
[Slide 38]
We have done a lot of giveaways and do-dads. We have done pens and
rather than the pen with just a single message on it, we invested in
some that when you click on the pen there is a rotating chamber inside
and the question actually changes. They are all done in
questions—not a statement, but a question. The pen—I am holding it
in my hand and I know you can’t see it.
On the barrel of the pen it leads people to a website. Everything
we are doing we are leading people back to one central place. That
website is http://www.whodependsonyou.com
and I will show you that in a minute. As you click through the
pen is asks questions like—do you have a pet emergency kit? Do you
have food for disaster? Do you have water for a disaster?
Do you have a family emergency plan?
People have told us it has been very effective. Shopping bags—we
took the typical shopping bag but we printed the list of items to pick
up at the supermarket on the outside of the shopping bag. As they
take it, and it is a reusable shopping bag, they always have that list
with them. We have done other kinds of giveaways as well.
Another one that has been pretty unique is that we have printed coffee
sleeves, the kind of sleeves you get when you go by your local coffee
stand in the morning. It is actually a set of four different
coffee sleeves. There are two questions on each one.
There are questions like –do you have an out of area contact card for
your whole family?–on one side.
On the other side it is—do you know which neighbors might need extra
help in a disaster? On another one—if you couldn’t get home for
the next 48 hours, what would you do? The other side of that one
is—how would you reach your family in a disaster?
The design is that if you go by your local coffee stand every morning
and you get a different coffee sleeve, over the course of a couple of
weeks you are going to be confronted, or at least it is going to be
surfaced, that you have eight different messages coming at you. It
has been interested to watch people come back to our office saying they
have a coffee sleeve from somewhere. They’ve been pretty excited
about that.
[Slide 39]
We also have shared the message. We are a big believer in
partnerships because not one of us is going to be able to all this
education ourselves. We want to make sure we partner through our
state emergency management division. We have partnered with our
individual counties here in Washington. The Boeing Corporation and
Fred Meyers—Fred Meyers is a local west coast company but they are
similar to Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart has used some bits and pieces of “Who Depends on You” and we
have done a research project with Western Washington University.
What we have found is that even when we are doing research we are
educating. So it has been a very successful partnership outreach.
The photo you see in the slide is of two Native American women and the
campaign is designed that you can customize it for your target
population. We have a number of tribal entities here in the State
of Washington. We gladly shared it and they took it and put their
own pictures of their own elders into the message. They were delighted
at how effective that was because it personalizes it.
[Slide 40]
Sustainable messages—we didn’t want to just simply do a “here it is
once” but we know that if people are really going to take action they
need to hear messages multiple times before it sinks in and they take
that action. The grocery bags were an effort at that sustainable
and the coffee sleeves definitely so, the pens and again we bring
everybody back to a single point of information and that is the “Who
Depends on You” website.
From there you can click into most anything, any piece of information,
that anybody could need whether that is from a federal source like FEMA
or ready.gov, a local state emergency management, Red Cross or the
health district, but to bring them back into local by bringing them back
into the “Who Depends on You” website.
[Slide 41]
Here is a screenshot of the website. It is very simple.
There is not a lot of content necessarily but there are an awful lot of
links. That is what we want people to do—to be able to find the
information quickly and get the information they need, and sticking with
the branding of “Who Depends on You—Are You Prepared for Disaster?”
[Slide 42]
About halfway down or maybe three quarters of the way down the website
you’ll see a section that says “Features—Download this: Who
Depends on You”. That link is for you—for those of you listening
in and who are interested in what we have done as far as designing
brochures, posters and various parts of this campaign. You don’t
need to start over again. Take what we have done. Link
through this part of the webpage and there are templates, meaning that
there are brochures that are already done on pets, or important
documents, older and elderly issues, and then there is a place on those
where you can drop in your own specific information, logo, and telephone
numbers. There are places that will allow it to become
yours. It is very much for the taking.
[Slide 43]
To close up here and open it up for your questions—“Who Depends on
You”—that is “the why’ you got up this morning when the alarm went
off. That is the motivation—because there is someone depending on
you, something you need to get done, or someone you are responsible
for.
”The what” you need to do now that you are up—that is the specific
information that the next phase will look at but also collaborates “Who
Depends on You” with other sources of specific action items and
informational kinds of websites or campaigns. “Who Depends on You”
is a partner in a collaborative campaign that goes with “Are You
Ready”, “Three Days Three Ways” and “What To Do To Make It Through” and
any number of other kinds of public ad campaigns.
[Slide 44]
To wrap this up and then give you the floor—who depends on you and what
are you going to do to be better prepared? You won’t do anything
if you just stay educated and you don’t take that next step and take
some action. My contact number and email are up there, and the
website, http://www.whodependsonyou.com . I would very much like to support your efforts if this is something you think would be useful in your community.
Please let me know what I can do to help. Amy, I am going to turn
it back to you now. We can take questions or just have some
discussion.
Amy Sebring: Thank you very much Mary. That is wonderful. I
will put this contact information back up at the end of the program.
That link to the download materials Mary was describing is on our
background page and we will get it into the transcript.
[Audience Questions & Answers]
Question:
Amy Sebring: How long has your program been running?
Mary Schoenfeldt: Amy I think we started it four years
ago or maybe three years—long enough that it has been in the
community. Because of funding and because of bits and parts and
pieces there has been high visibility, low visibility—kind of the roller
coaster of public education. We have been at it now long enough
that it has been researched. We hear it is not the end-all-be-all
but it is effective.
Amy Sebring: I’m sure part of that has to do with being able to sustain it over time.
Mary Schoenfeldt: Absolutely. A single message
isn’t going to resonate and change behavior. It simply isn’t. It
has to be a continuous and credible message. One of the other
reasons that we have been successful and I don’t remember the exact
study but there is some study that people need to hear the same message
seven times from different credible sources before it sinks in and we
get behavior change.
We have used it in public places like the library and city hall.
At sporting events we have done a lot of public education so that if
people are going to the hockey game they see it there as well as their
child bringing something home from school and then seeing it on a
billboard as they drive to work, or they come to a neighborhood meeting
and they hear it again.
Question:
Rocky Lopes: Great work! Impressive! Wondering, have you
conducted evaluation to know what people who were exposed to this
campaign actually did do to improve personal preparedness? Any results?
Question:
Mary Woodward: Do you have any measurement tools to determine success and how do you define success?
Mary Schoenfeldt: How do you define success?
Behavior change is a difficult one to define. As far as research,
we have done some research. It has been local and in some ways
possibly limited. Western Washington University did a yearlong
study of the campaign starting with some pre-surveys and then
post-surveys after we got the message up.
What we found is that it did change. I’ll read a couple of things
from these. It says, “Those familiar with the campaign were more
likely to have discussed preparedness, often in connection with a
disaster event on the news.” What that says to me is that people
are thinking about who depends on you watching the news and saying, “If
this were our community, what would we do?”
It goes on to say in the executive study that they were also more likely
to have stored food and water and to have replenished it in the last
six months. People were more likely to have had a family emergency
plan, battery-operated radio, etcetera than those who were not familiar
with the campaign.
There is also some strategies that they suggested that I thought were
very interesting. Promoting material at community events appears
to be a good strategy for reaching homeowners while busses and
billboards seem to be more effective with renters. That was
intriguing information about that target marketing.
Another piece out of the research says that community based social
marketing techniques which emphasize small steps, commitments and
incentives may further enhance the campaign material. We have
measured it and it seems to be making a difference. I don’t have
the executive summary on the Who Depends on You website but if anybody
is interested, email me and I’ll get it. Amy I can get it to you
and you can make it available. [Note: The entire report can be accessed from http://www.emforum.org/vforum/Outreach/WWUWDOYreport.pdf ]
Question:
Sarah Green: What was the most successful approach in
your efforts to engage the business community to get employee programs
in place at Boeing and Fred Meyer?
Mary Schoenfeldt: Interesting question—we started by offering
them posters that could go in their employee break room. What we
found was that for a private corporation like Boeing, or Wal-Mart, a
grocery store or PetSmart to put it for public consumption, there is a
corporate process. We started by simply asking them to put it up
in their employee break room.
We also put together a one page informational sheet based on some of the
Small Business administration information about what kinds of
businesses will survive, which ones won’t, and what makes the
difference. Employer preparedness is the bottom and that is the
foundation.
From there we created a diagram that is a pyramid that shows employer
preparedness is the foundation to be able to survive and be a viable
part of the recovery of a community. We made personal contact with
businesses, both small and large.
Question:
Isabel McCurdy: What time of the year do you do these community campaign messages?
Mary Schoenfeldt: It is ongoing. There are times we
are more visible than other times, but it is not seasonal. There
are some campaigns that are seasonal like we have one here in the
Pacific Northwest called “Take Winter by Storm” that runs at a certain
time of the year but the “Who Depends on You” is continuous.
Question:
Ray Pena: Does the program reach out to children in elementary grades? If yes, how young are the children reached?
Mary Schoenfeldt: Ray, we have not reached into elementary
schools as much as we might. It is one if those things we think
about doing but to penetrate a school system is difficult because they
are so inundated with people who want to do that. What we did with
schools rather than coming into classrooms is we did a program for all
the administrators wrapped around “Who Depends on You—Are You Prepared
for Disaster?”
We did it for administrators on personal preparedness for their staff
and we did a “train the trainer” where I put the presentation together
and I went to administrative meetings, did the presentation and provided
them with a basic presentation on personal and family preparedness that
they then could take to their staff depending on what their limitations
were for staff time for any kind of education.
We have infiltrated, if you will, the schools but from a different level
than the classroom up. We have done it from the administration
down focusing on employee preparedness with the employees being school
staff.
Question:
Amy Sebring: Have you had an opportunity to take this campaign out into the social media?
Mary Schoenfeldt: We have not and part of that is my
personal challenge with technology. They say there are natives and
immigrants when it comes to technology and social media. I’m old
enough that I am always going to be an immigrant when it comes to social
media. We just have not. I would love to see someone take
it out to social media and see what we can do with it.
Question:
Rocky Lopes: Now that Washington participates in The
Great ShakeOut, do you connect messaging between that event and “who
depends on you?” Seems like a good connection.
Mary Schoenfeldt: Rocky, you are fabulous. I forgot
to mention that. We designed for the City of Everett—we have
about a thousand employees—we designed an employee challenge wrapped
around “Who Depends on You” for the Shake Out and it was highly
successful meaning that if I had gotten ten city employees to
participate I would have been delighted.
We got about 150 employees to participate. The first time out I
was really excited by that. Again we wrapped the whole thing
around “Who Depends on You—Are You Prepared For A Disaster?” Then
we did a series of challenges starting six weeks out from the Shake Out,
starting with simple things like a word search and then ending with the
day of the Shake Out and looking around your desk and figuring out
where it is you are safe.
Is there something you can do to make your personal work environment
safer? We asked employees to figure out an alternative route to
and from work. Yes we did tie it with the Shake Out and it was a
very successful collaboration between those two programs.
Question:
Avagene Moore: Mary, I like your approach. Since
FEMA is always looking for new ways to prepare our citizens, are they
aware of your program? I can envision this as a very viable
national campaign.
Mary Schoenfeldt: I appreciate that. I have been in
meetings with FEMA representatives where we have talked about it.
I don’t think I have had the conversation with the right person within
FEMA. The feedback that I’ve gotten that I always get is that it
is a very viable program.
I don’t know how to make the connection to FEMA to make it a national
program but I agree. I think it is one of those messages that
resonate. It is not the end-all-be-all. There is a lot more
information that needs to come behind it but it seems to get people’s
attention.
Question:
Amy Sebring: Do you have any specific plans in the future in terms of this campaign?
Mary Schoenfeldt: Where we’re going with it next is we
are looking at the next phase about getting more specific about the
kinds of actions. Now that we have your attention this is what
we’d like you to do. We haven’t come up with the specifics of what
that will look like, again because we don’t see this as being the
end-all and the only program out there.
We continue to share it in absolutely every way we can. That is
why I went to the International Association of Emergency Management
Conference and shared it there. That is why I am delighted to
share it today with all of you. We just keep working on it because
it seems to be a message that makes sense to people.
Question:
Amy Sebring: Have you taken it to universities? I
know you mentioned Western Washington University in terms of research
but as far as outreach to universities.
Mary Schoenfeldt: We have actually and University of
Washington uses this campaign as the frame. In the discussion with
the preparedness coordinator at the University of Washington we had a
long discussion over a cup of coffee about who really depends on a
university student—so how do you reframe this?
What we came to is that it does fit—university students definitely
depend on each other so friends depend on them and their parents depend
on them to be okay. That has been one of the reframes I have had
to do in the senior population also. I went to do a presentation
at a senior residential facility and people are looking at me—eighty
years old with their walkers saying, “Nobody really depends on me.”
But we reframed it to maybe they are not depending on you to grab the
backpack out of the car and bring it in but they are depending on you to
be okay. We were able to reframe and it fit. It fits with
universities as well.
Question:
Avagene Moore: Has anyone from Citizen Corps or even individual CERT programs used your program? I believe it would be excellent.
Mary Schoenfeldt: We do a lot of work with Citizen Corps
and we have a very active CERT program. We have not made a
specific connection between the two. That intrigues me and I’ll
have to think about that and figure out how we can make that connection.
[Closing]
Amy Sebring: I think you have done such a wonderful job
covering this we are going to wrap it up a little early today. I have
put your contact information back up here so people can get in touch
with you. We’ll be looking forward to getting that executive summary and
up on our background page.
On behalf of Avagene, myself, and all our participants today, thank you
very much Mary for joining us today and sharing these wonderful
ideas. We wish you continued success in the future.
Mary Schoenfeldt: Thank you, and thank everybody who joined us,
because public education is not a single person’s job by any means, so I
greatly appreciate everyone’s efforts to continue to educate. Not just
educate but to motivate!
Amy Sebring: Folks, before you go, PLEASE take a moment to do the rating and enter any additional comments you may have.
Our next program is scheduled for March 13th. Please make plans to join us then and watch for our announcement.
Have a great afternoon everyone! We are adjourned.