AMU Emergency Management Public Safety

Featured Organization–Team Rubicon

Avenues to provide volunteer EDM services

It’s a sad fact that there is much more volunteer capability than there is volunteer capacity. That is: eager, qualified, competent potential volunteers often cannot find an outlet for their energy. This is due primarily to one unfortunate feature of the EDM process–that disaster volunteer organization and supervision is complex, time-consuming, and creates liabilities: so organizations often decide that it’s not worth the effort to invest in that level of volunteer resourcing, utilization, and supervision.

My entirely subjective perception of organizations that do and do not welcome volunteers, based upon my experience as an eager volunteer of a few years ago when I was trying to access an outlet for my energy, would look something like this:

Volunteerism not welcome: FEMA; The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies; the United Nations; X without Borders (with the caveat that if you are a professional in the X field, you would be welcome).

Volunteerism welcome: The American Red Cross (although they have a stringent hierarchy and vetting process with regard to deploying outside the community); CERT (community emergency response teams); and the Southern Baptist Convention Disaster Relief organization.

I freely acknowledge that there are thousands of organizations that provide disaster relief, and that this list only encompasses my own experience, which is very limited. So if you have a different perspective based on your own experience, please DO provide it in the comments.

Team Rubicon

But this presentation is about [link url=”http://www.teamrubiconusa.org/” title=”Team Rubicon“]. Please look through their website. I discovered it only recently, and it reignited my interest in volunteer service. The organization, in its own words: ‘unites the skills and experiences of military veterans with first responders to rapidly deploy emergency response teams.’

How cool is that?

So if you are a veteran or equivalent with skills that would be applicable in an emergency or disaster situation–and the list of helpful skills is extensive–please look through the website with an eye towards what you could contribute to making our journey turn out better for all of Spaceship Earth’s passengers. There’s no doubt that you could contribute something that would make you feel REALLY good about yourself.

Thanks in advance for your contributions.

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