• Volunteer leadership skills
• Household disaster preparedness
• Spiritual care and stress management for victims and volunteers
• Basic first aid
• Mass sheltering and feeding
• Pandemic Flu Preparedness and Prophylaxis Distribution

• Ask members of your congregation to join the VLC
• Secure their commitment to join this extraordinary effort
• Return the completed Clergy Recommendation Form to Ready Houston! or register online!
• Once registered they begin training for the VLC.
• Classes are offered throughout the year all across the Greater Houston area.

Class Descriptions

Household Preparedness

This is a train-the-trainer class, designed to provide thorough, up-to-date, easy to follow information that will assist households in planning and preparation for disasters in the Houston area. While the class covers all hazards, classroomtime focuses on hurricane and flood preparation. Topics include:

· Making the decision to stay or go when a hurricane is coming
· Preparing for evacuation or sheltering-in-place
· Providing for children, the elderly, and pets in an emergency
· Preparing a 72-hour kit
· Staying in communication with loved ones during an emergency
· Other emergencies such as tornados, fires, chemical and biological hazards

Upon completion of the class, participants will have the basic information needed to present a family disaster preparedness class in their congregation or workplace. Each participant will also receive several easy to follow handouts that can be used for presentations, newsletters or bulletins.

Spiritual Care

This class is designed to to prepare the volunteer leadership corps members to identify and respond to the extreme emotions, concerns and fears experienced by victims of disaster and the volunteers responding to disaster. The manual for this class is, "Light Our Way- A Guide for Spiritual Care in Times of Disaster", published by National Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD). Topics include:

· Basic Concepts of Spiritual Care
· Disaster Spiritual Care "Do's"
· Disaster Spiritual Care "Don'ts"
· Emotional Care and its' Relationship to Spiritual Care
· Caring for people from different cultures and faith traditions

How to Lead Disaster Response Volunteers

This class prepares Volunteer Leadership Corps members to lead the hundreds of spontaneous unaffiliated volunteers (SUV) that respond during times of disaster. These suv's can themselves become a serious "disaster within the disaster," SUV's are highly motivated to help, but because they are untrained, without disaster trained leadership, and may respond at the wrong place, at the wrong time they often become a "disaster within a disaster." This training session provides VLC members with skills and knowledge necessary to help government and other volunteer agency officials manage the thousands of SUV's responding to the next disaster. This class focuses on management skills and theories specific and unique to leading volunteers in the aftermath of a disaster. Topics include:

· Motivating volunteers
· Caring for your volunteers in the field
· What to expect in the field
· Paperwork and reporting protocols

Click here for the Training Schedule

Clergy Recommendation Form