FREE MATERIAL to help your community or business increase awareness and resilience during Emergency Preparedness Week.
Increase awareness and resilience during Emergency Preparedness Week
Emergency Preparedness Week is an opportunity to work with your community or business and help all individuals become better prepared for emergencies. This doesn't have to be time-consuming or expensive, but it does take some work and planning ahead.
Background: What is Emergency Preparedness Week?
Emergency Preparedness Week (EPW) is a national event led by Public Safety Canada that has been held over the first full week of May for the last 27 years. During EPW all levels of government, emergency management organizations, Indigenous organizations, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector work together and support activities to help increase individual, family and community preparedness.
5 steps to increase awareness and resilience during EPW
It’s important to remember that there is something every community and business can do to increase awareness and build resilience. Here are 5 steps every community or business can take to promote awareness and resilience in their organization:
Step 1: Take time to plan
Determine the main goal of your campaign and the best way to connect with your target audience. Make sure to identify the resources you have at your disposal including finances, people and time. 
Keep these thoughts in mind as you plan the following 4 things:
- Theme: What theme would you like to focus on? For example, a type of event such as fires or floods or highlighting the steps to recovery after an emergency.
- Communication: How are you going to communicate your message to others? This could include social media posts, radio spots, events such as a preparedness fair, printed materials such as posters that could be displayed in prominent locations, etc. What method of communication is going to resonate with the demographics in your area? For example, targeting social media in a primarily senior organization may not be the most effective way to connect with your audience.
- Budget: Make sure you tailor your planning in such a way that you stay within the available budget for your campaign. Using materials from alternate sources such as your provincial/federal government or businesses such as PEASI and customizing them to meet your needs may help you keep costs down. You may also want to partner with a local organization to help off-set the costs.
- Schedule: Determine the timing of your campaign. Create a timeline for when decisions need made, resources need to be available, events need booked and planned as well as who is responsible for each item.
Step 2: Produce material
What messages do you want to convey to the public? There are 4 steps to developing material used during your campaign:
- Develop your key messages. Keep this simple and choose a maximum of 3. Be specific and have a clear call-to-action.
- Produce drafts, proofs and mock ups for the various communication methods you chose. For example, social media posts, website, Q&A and FAQs for radio spots, new release drafts, and graphic designs for posters, brochures, etc. for use in print and digital media. Keep your demographics in mind and choose appropriate methods to connect with them.
- Have your material reviewed and approved if necessary.
- Finalize and publish material.
Step 3: Determine how you will measure success of your project
How do you know if your efforts have been successful?
Determine in advance what metrics you would like to see for each communication method.
This could include:
- Number of people liking a post or clicking a link
- Number listening or viewing your tv and radio spots
- How many engaged with you and took a specific action if asked. These action could include calling a phone number or emailing you with information.
- Number of attendees at your event
- Volume of traffic on your website
Step 4: Execute your plan
Now is when you put into action all the planning by:
- Holding your event
- Posting on social media
- Releasing radio/tv ads
- Publishing print media
Step 5: Wrap up
Was your campaign a success or failure? Did you engage with as many people as you would have liked? What changes could you implement for future events that could improve the outcome? Now is the time to wrap up your event and determine how successful it was by:
- Gather the statistics from the metrics you predetermined in step 3
- Hold a post-mortem meeting with you team to share the results. Determine what went well and what needs improvement.
- Determine at a high level what changes need to be made before the next campaign to improve the expected outcomes
To help you with your campaign to promote awareness and increase resilience within your organization PEASI has created and made available a variety of material.
Download FREE EPW promotional material for your community and business.
