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Natural Disaster Awareness for Community Leaders (AWR-310)

Community leaders have the opportunity to enhance their community’s ability to prepare for, respond to, recover from, and mitigate against all forms of disasters. This course helps to enhance understanding of natural disasters, risk assessment in the context of disaster management, prevailing emergency management procedures and operations, and the different vulnerability factors that exist within the community.

This course also provides community leaders with an understanding of the necessary plans and tools needed in planning for natural disasters, and will help them to better understand and identify individuals and groups best equipped to address response and recovery requirements in the case of an actual disaster.

Course Modules:

  • Disaster Risk and Resilience
  • Social Capital
  • Growing Social Capital

Target Audience:

  • Citizen/Community Volunteers
    • Religious Organizations
    • Business Community
    • Civic Groups
  • Emergency Management
  • Government Administrative
    • Elected Officials
    • Community Outreach

Course Level: Awareness
Prerequisites: None. This is an introductory course. 

ASFPM Credit Units: 3.5 Continuing Education Credits
IACET Credit Units: 0.3 Continuing Education Units
IAEM (E) Credit Units: 4.0 Emergency Management Training Credit Hours

About the Presenter

Dr. Mary Schoenfeldt, is an Emergency Management Professional who has spent her career with people around the world. She works with schools, government, businesses, tribal leaders and communities. She responded to high profile communities such as Littleton Colorado, New Orleans, Haiti and Newtown Connecticut. She traveled to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting to work with the school and community. She stayed when her assignment was over to study the impact of a community crisis on Emergency Management and the community as a whole.

She values all stakeholders.. young, old, educated, uneducated, professional, lay person. She was recognized by the International Association of Emergency Managers for her emergency preparedness campaign, Who Depends On You? She developed a model of volunteer/professional integration for a large city festival and parade that resulted in a collaborative Incident Command System that acted as a recruiting event for CERT programs and added a sophisticated element of training to all… professional and non professional participants.

She has held various positions within activated EOC’s … Deputy EOC Coordinator, Communications Coordinator, Public Information Officer, Section Chief, Mental Health Coordinator, and Recovery Director.

Her work has won awards from the International Association of Emergency Managers, she was inducted into the HALL OF FAME of the International Network of Women in Emergency Management, was honored by The International Critical Incident Stress Foundation and is Board President of the Disaster Mental Health agency, Green Cross Academy of Traumatology. Mary volunteers with humanitarian organizations and is active in her Rotary club where she earned the Service Above Self award for not only local but also international projects.