LISTEN TO GROVER

  • Published
  • By Tim Barela
  • Torch Magazine
Sometimes pre-kindergarten children don't obey their parents, but they nearly always listen to Grover. And studies show that what's important to children is usually important to their moms and dads.

So, want to make a lasting cultural change? Get children involved.

At least that's the hope of leaders from Shelby County, Tenn., who teamed up with Sesame Street to distribute disaster preparedness and emergency kit literature titled "Let's Get Ready?" that targets pre-K children, ages 3 to 5.

"Following Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans, our community felt the after effects as the post-Katrina evacuees poured in," said Maj. Gen. Jan Young, Air National Guard assistant to the commander of Air Education and Training Command, who in her civilian role, also serves as the executive director of the Assisi Foundation of Memphis, Inc. (a health legacy foundation). "It really opened our eyes to what could happen ... made us realize how vulnerable we were. We had to figure out a different way to respond."

This became even more important last summer when researchers from the University of Memphis discovered a 30-mile long fault under the Mississippi River, along the Western border of the Shelby County line. In August, WMC-TV reported that researchers claim the Meeman-Shelby Fault could trigger a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, which would be a devastating blow to Memphis in terms of fire, flood, and wrecked buildings, bridges and roads.

"We have a large urban group with demographics similar to many of the people left behind in New Orleans after Katrina," said Young, who holds a doctorate in nursing practice. "The time to act was now, not after a disaster happened."

When officials started conducting surveys and focus groups to gauge the community's preparedness, they were concerned to find it all too low.

"When it came to emergency and disaster preparedness, most of our messaging had basically been threatening people to be prepared," Young said. "It was scare tactics: 'You'd better be prepared or you're gonna die.' "

But they found these methods weren't working.

"First off, people didn't like being threatened," Young said. "Secondly, our focus groups showed that no matter the demographic -- whether you were poor or considered to be affluent, whether well-educated or a high school drop out -- people in our community admitted to not being prepared. Most had no level of preparation for an emergency or disaster."

So Young, an expert facilitator and management consultant for community organizations, represented the foundation as it got together with the mayors from all the municipalities in the greater Memphis area. That ignited the "I'm Ready" campaign, which focuses on personal responsibilities during an emergency or disaster.

Piggybacking on that idea, Young was talking to Sesame Street on early reading initiatives when the subject of emergency preparedness came up. Sesame Street was intrigued by Shelby County's "I'm Ready" campaign, as they were in the process of launching their own "Let's Get Ready" campaign aimed at children.

"The prospect of teaming up with Sesame Street excited me as we already knew from our focus group demographics that emergency preparedness is more likely to be successful if children are involved," Young said. "So if we could get children's attention, we could get entire families interested. That's important because evidence suggests that people who think and talk about preparedness are less likely to panic if something catastrophic does happen."

So they partnered up with Sesame Street and set a goal to get the disaster response kits to every family who had children between the ages of 3 and 5. They started delivering the bilingual kits (Memphis has a growing Hispanic community) to every child care center and pre-K early education center in the county.

"This was perfect because we get kids telling their parents that Grover says 'Let's get ready!'" Young said. "They're asking, 'Do we have our kit, Mommy? Do we have our kit, Daddy?' No parent wants their kid to tell their teacher, 'We're not ready because Mommy and Daddy didn't make a kit for us.' They work their magic on grandparents as well -- they don't want to let the children down."

Shelby's program reaches far beyond the children as well. They target businesses, schools, hospitals and churches throughout their community. They teamed up with The Commercial Appeal, the predominant newspaper in the area and one of the largest in the United States, to print and deliver a preparedness guide and calendar that were distributed in the newspaper's last Sunday edition of 2008 to the tune of nearly 200,000 copies. They even have their own Web site -- ReadyShelby.org -- with a variety of tips and guidance on emergency preparedness in easy to digest short bursts of information.

"Shelby County is a model for cultural change," said Col. John W. Blumentritt, AETC's director of safety. "They didn't just sit back and wait for a disaster to happen; they prepared and mobilized the community.

"In the Air Force, we shape culture early by immersing our new Airmen with safety information in the infancy of their careers. Shelby County has taken this culture shaping approach to a magnanimous level. They leverage culture enhancing tools like the symbol of Grover, as well as specialized slogans such as 'Let's Get Ready,' to excite children barely out of diapers to embrace this worthy cause. This is truly a positive example of bolstering a population that willfully accepts responsibility at the lowest levels, with a celebratory attitude of embracing a culture that is prepared and ready for the worst."