Many Sharing One Goal

After recent disasters, it is becoming increasingly clear that community continuity equals business continuity.  In the past, many businesses have been reluctant to invest in continuity and contigency planning on the false assumption that someone else in the community will be there in the first hours of crisis to pick up the slack or do the hard recovery work to restore life to normal.

Disaster is an equal opportunity leveler except when businesses, institutions and community organizations make the extra effort to put plans and training into practice that can insure against catastrophic loss of assets, personnel and/or information.  An ounce of prevention in disaster preparedness pays huge dividends not only for business, but also for the community, since the two are inseparable.

The ReadyCommunities Partnership brings together the public, private and community sector partners who share the view that their recovery depends on their contribution to community recovery, both in preparedness and in recovery planning.  The National Congress for Secure Communities and Symposia are their national gathering, and partners include:

*CCROA, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government/Leadership for a Networked World, Fred Friendly Seminars at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism

*the Joint Interagency Training Center, the National Joint Terrorism Task Force, the National Guard 

*pilot communites such as Galveston, Charleston, Oakland County, Hamilton County IN, Johnson Co KY, Buffalo

*Associate and Partner Chairs of CIPRR that include leading private and public sector experts and innovators

Identifying inexpensive yet effective ways to leverage community assets, best practices and resources is the goal of the Partnership, which conducts pilot projects in communities to develop replicable templates that leverage innovation and technology that can help reinforce local critical infrastructure.