Safe Community Project

The Safe Community Project (via MySafe:LA) is working to reduce the things that people don't think about on a daily basis. Fire. Earthquake. Sudden Cardiac Arrest. Wildfires. Persons experiencing homelessness. We're in LA schools, older adult facilities, libraries, and walking in neighborhoods every week to get the word out. We install free smoke alarms and CO detectors to at-risk families, making their homes safer. We teach CPR in high schools, at events, and in our facility in L.A (full certification available). We canvas neighborhoods, working with fire departments to deliver home fire safety. Our paramedics and EMTs are trained not only as first responders, but as educators and public safety officers. Overall, we're working to create a more resilient community.

We also develop emergency response plans, EOC guides, and provide training to help museums, large public organizations, and municipalities to be better prepared for disasters and emergencies.

We offer a number of focused programs to help improve life safety. These programs are not just checking a box related to a school or senior center. Our programs are designed to change the way people think and behave related to their personal safety and family security. We utilize interactivity, the Internet, film (internally produced), and most importantly, we localize and create a fun environment in which these messages are shared. www.mysafela.org shares how each of these programs works, and what can be done to further reduce the needless loss of life in the greater Los Angeles area. Several of our programs include FireSmart:LA, Junior Fire Inspector, QuakeSmart:LA, WaterSmart:LA, Heart CPR, and SeniorSmart:LA. We don't reinvent the wheel, so to speak, but we localize so people recognize how these programs directly affect them. And, like most successful programs, we partner with those who can best highlight the importance of what we do. We have working agreements with the Los Angeles Fire Department, the American Red Cross, American Heart Association and other entities. We partner with the LA Unified School District, CalTech, the USGS, Southern California Earthquake Center, Earthquake Country Alliance, Emergency Management Department, Department of Aging, and many others to ensure we get the best leadership, input, and collaboration possible. Our public safety officers utilize video, interactive presentations, role playing, and the Internet to share our programs, engage our audience, and drive home the importance of becoming part of the solution as it relates to disaster preparedness and resilience. We also count everything. By creating, evaluating, and tracking metrics on all of our programs, we can improve our programs with each passing year.

We are entrepreneurial about our operations. We are not (yet) a large organization, so we maximize our work efforts by using technology, partnerships, and focused leadership. We are very self-contained. We have our own web team, film team, education team, government relations leadership, as well as a very high tech administrative team. The result is that we can execute our mission for less than 1/6th of the cost of a typical governmental organization. Our uniformed public safety officers are either EMTs, Paramedics or have their Firefighter 1 certification. Our internal continuing education requirements are ongoing, and we rework our presentations annually. Our classroom programs can be delivered identically by any of our public safety officers, so our messages are consistent, match national standards, and help our audiences easily understand and grasp what they need to do in order to be better prepared. We engage with local and state elected leadership to ensure our local community efforts are recognized, understood, and supported. Our film team has won dozens of awards for outstanding film production and one of our executive producer/advisors is a two-time Academy Award winning filmmaker. Our web team is made up of skilled talent in IT, server management, application development, and content creation - and the result is a web ecosystem that is secured by multiple mirrors in multiple states, has duplicate and backup capabilities in the event of disaster, and is designed to engage our audience with quality imagery and content. Our education team is led by a former University and Broadcast Journalism expert, engages with local educators, and is focused on the quality and ease of understanding in all of our programs.

In the past 5 years, more than 87,000 high school students have completed our CPR/AED course. Since January of 2014, we've had more than 1.55 million visits to our websites, we completed 390,000 + student impressions; we've delivered 44,600 + free smoke alarms (and installed), provided 5,890 + GO bags to older adults, and provided 250,000 + Ready, Set, Go brochures, 106,000 FireSmart:LA guides, and 34,000 QuakeSmart:LA guides. We engage all 15 LA City Council offices, support more than 130 fire stations (LA area), and work with elected officials, disaster preparedness leadership, and others to ensure our programs are useful and making a difference. We deliver post event quiz materials to 1/5th of the facilities we visit, to determine retention and understanding. We offer surveys (developed via our research partner), and ensure we're improving our presentations year over year. During the coming year, our organization is working diligently to improve our school programs, to facility support for Assembly Bill 1719 related to high school CPR education, to expand our reach beyond the LA area, and to work more closely with neighborhood councils and HOAs to create more resilient communities.