Here’s How We Prepared Communities for Disaster and How You Can Get Prepared, Too

America’s PrepareAthon! – a grassroots campaign to get more people prepared for disaster – urges all of us to take action to keep ourselves, our neighbors and our families safe. To support the campaign, throughout April Points of Light informed and equipped local communities to be able to more quickly respond to and recover from disaster.

Community members in Orange County, California, take part in a disaster simulation as part of OneOC’s America’s PrepareAthon! activities.

Points of Light held a Pledge to be Prepared campaign to launch the newly redesigned Good & Ready website, www.goodandready.org. (Check out the site for ways to prepare!)

Members of Points of Light’s Community Emergency Preparedness Corps organized service projects and informational fairs to distribute preparedness information.

With the help of corps members, thousands of disaster preparedness kits were assembled and distributed in diverse locations, such as food pantries and senior centers, and preparedness scavenger hunts were conducted to engage youth in how to become better prepared.

Affiliates of Points of Light's HandsOn Network participated in various ways. Here are some highlights:

• Boston Cares organized a 25 Day Preparedness Challenge, encouraging Bostonians to get prepared and share photos to encourage others to participate.
• The AmeriCorps member at OneOC distributed preparedness material during a beach cleanup in Orange County, California, and organized a mock disaster in the community. 
• AmeriCorps members at Metro Volunteers in Denver canvassed four apartment complexes over six days, distributing more than 560 information packets to senior, low-income and immigrant residents. 

The Allstate Foundation, which is currently supporting a 14-city disaster preparedness tour with Points of Light, printed more than 100,000 preparedness brochures and information sheets to support the AmeriCorps members’ efforts. 

To learn how to better prepare yourself and your family and to take the preparedness pledge, visit www.goodandready.org.