From: Tom Atlee
Subject: GAP's city Y2K preparedness plan
Date: Wednesday, August 18, 1999 7:27 PM

Here's the Global Action Plan Press Release which explains in detail the content and context of this Y2K community preparation package. -- Tom Atlee

Global Action Plan for the Earth (GAP) has released All Together Now-- community preparedness tools to help municipalities assist households and neighborhoods prepare for the possibility of Y2K disruptions of essential goods and services. The All Together Now tools consist of a household workbook for individual and neighborhood preparedness, a basic preparedness brochure designed for distribution to all households and tools for neighborhood and community-wide organizing. The tools are designed for maximum flexibility and customization by any community.

All Together Now is part of the Y2K & YOU campaign sponsored by Public Technology Inc., the National League of Cities, National Association of Counties and International City/County Management Association. GAP has also partnered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in disseminating the All Together Now community preparedness tools to emergency managers nationwide. The All Together Now community preparedness model is based on GAP's ten years of experience with its neighborhood and household environment programs being implemented by cities throughout the United States and around the world.

The following is a description of each of the five tools:

COMMUNITY INITIATOR GUIDE -- is designed to support a local government official or civic leader through the process of introducing the All Together Now community preparedness campaign into a municipality. The process consists of assessing the interest and support for a campaign in the community, learning how to present the benefits of household preparedness to decision-makers, developing a proposal, identifying municipal agencies or other host groups, and presenting the proposal and budget to potential hosts.

COMMUNITY ORGANIZER HANDBOOK -- is a repository of GAPs ten years of community and neighborhood organizing experience. It's designed to assist a municipal leadership team in developing a neighborhood-based community-wide preparedness campaign that educates each member of the community. A particular emphasis is placed on identifying and assisting vulnerable populations. If the community is unable to deliver a full community preparedness campaign, the handbook describes two fall back strategies for preparedness at reduced levels. The handbook is based on using the household preparedness workbook, basic preparedness brochure and neighborhood leader guide, described below.

NEIGHBORHOOD LEADER GUIDE -- provides the practical and proven GAP strategies and techniques that enable neighbors to support neighbors to take action. It can be done either as part of a community preparedness campaign or autonomously if no municipal effort is in place. It is designed to train a volunteer neighborhood leader and several deputies to disseminate the household preparedness workbook and/or a basic preparedness brochure to a neighborhood unit of up to 150 households. The goal is to get as many neighbors into self-supporting teams as possible and encourage the remainder to do the program as individual households. The heart of the guide is instruction in using GAP's tested strategies and techniques for inviting neighbors to informational meetings and leading these meetings so neighbors are motivated to participate in the program.

HOUSEHOLD PREPAREDNESS WORKBOOK -- simplifies preparing for Y2K disruptions into five specific sets of preparedness actions to be implemented one week at a time. The program can be done as part of a neighborhood team or as an individual household. With the help of this easy-to-use workbook, five or six neighbors support and motivate each other in putting these actions into practice and serve as a critical support system if services are disrupted.

The five meeting topics are Team-Building; Energy; Water, Sanitation & Food; Health and Finances; Communication, Transportation and Neighborhood Safety. Included in the workbook is a topic-leader guide providing team members step-by-step instruction on how to run team meetings. The workbook features upbeat cartoons by renowned New Yorker Magazine cartoonist Ed Koren plus inspiring photographs.

Feedback from All Together Now pilot teams who used the household workbook has been very positive: "It helped me take action. I now feel some kind of control regarding Y2K." (M. Kornblum) "...as each household did a manageable piece of work, a tremendous amount got accomplished for the whole team." (H. Kaufman) "Disaster preparedness was truly made easy, fun and pleasurable. Not dramatic or crisis oriented, rather creative and solution-oriented." (L. Kawer)

BASIC PREPAREDNESS BROCHURE -- is an attractive, carefully researched and easy-to-use plan to help households develop a 7-day preparedness capability. The three-fold, 8 1/2" x 11" brochure features cartoons by Ed Koren. The brochure can be used independently as a mass mailing or integrated into the larger All Together Now preparedness campaign. For large-scale mailings the brochure can be customized with specific local government or sponsorship information.

GAP is securing financing to develop one or more subsidized invitational trainings on implementing the All Together Now community preparedness plan. If you are interested in attending one of these trainings, please e-mail GAP at info@globalactionplan.org and briefly describe how you might put the training to use in your community.

FEMA is producing an introduction to the All Together Now tools to be broadcast over their Emergency Education Network (EENET). If you are an emergency manager, local government or civic leader and are interested in viewing this broadcast, please e-mail GAP and an advisory will be sent when more details are confirmed. The FEMA broadcast is planned for early October.

For more information on the All Together Now program and to order preparedness materials, visit Global Action Plan's website at www.globalactionplan.org and go to the Y2K Tools section.

Tom Atlee * The Co-Intelligence Institute * Oakland, CA
http://www.co-intelligence.org
http://www.co-intelligence.org/Y2K.html
http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_Index.html

-- Critt Jarvis (critt@critt.com), August 18, 1999

Answers

Link to their Y2K Tools

-- Critt Jarvis (critt@critt.com), August 18, 1999.

Experts on Y2K say it confronts the world with the possibility of the first complex system failure in history. That may sound abstract, but if youll think back to the Challenger space shuttle tragedy youll realize that you understand everything about a system failure that you need to. There were a million components on the Challenger. Disaster struck because only one of them failed. Similarly, relatively minor Y2K-induced disruptions that catch us unprepared could easily cascade into serious problems that could have been avoided. The eventual outcome of such complicated interdependence is anyones guess. On the other hand, even serious Y2K troubles that were ready for will cause far less mischief than would otherwise be the case. And just getting ready for them together will be good for us. Good for our communities. Good for America. Good for the world.

(a quote from the GAP site)

Critt,
Thank you, thank you, thank you! This the is the kind of Y2K site I've been looking for. I have a lot of friends and family who believe that Y2K is just some right-wing extremist madness. They don't realize that computer code doesn't pay attention to political persuasion. Maybe this will help convince them.

I just read about half of the material there. I highly recommend this site to everyone, even those whose idea of good prep is to high-tail it to the boonies. Lot's of good prep tips.

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), August 18, 1999.

What a lot of excellent material! There isn't time left to both prepare oneself and one's community, which isn't interested because the government hasn't alerted them that it is necessary. Don't you just wish that the powers that be had listened to Ed Yourdon and others, and made this sort of material available to every American household two years ago? Or even a year ago? How sad that so few will be well prepared, when such information could have saved them! Household preps workbook is still worth distributing to newbies, but it could prove daunting, since it calls for studying the situation, and other steps which are time-consuming, when time now is at a premium. As you said, Bokonon, at least it helps to add credibility to what we attempt to impart to DGIs.

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), August 19, 1999.

Elaine,

I plan on using the community organization material, for after the fact. I don't subscribe to the notion that every single person will turn into this rabid jackal, bent on rape and pillage. Some will, but that's going to be easy info for me to pick up looking out my front door.

I live in what you might call a spread-out suburb. Not exactly rural, but getting there. It's a neighborhood of older homes and everybody on the street is into do-it-yourself, so everybody's got usable skills. It's also a neighborhood where people value their privacy, and for all I know, they're just as well stocked, if not more well stocked, than we are.

After I've taken some time to see which way the folks in my neck of the woods go on this thing, I plan on being very pro-active with community organization. Humans do better in communities, than they do in isolated pockets. That's why we clever apes banded together, in the first place.

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), August 19, 1999.