Delaware Citizen Corps Receives Award

On November 7, 2007 Bob George Citizen Corps Program Manager, and Marny McLee Citizen Corps Training and Outreach Coordinator for the Delaware Emergency Management Agency (DEMA) were presented the Regional Response and Readiness Award.

The award was presented during the Regional All Hazards Forum held at the Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, Md. The Mid-Atlantic All Hazards Forum (AHF) is a public-private partnership of Mid-Atlantic States and private corporations. It is sponsored by the All Hazards Consortium (AHC), a new non-profit organization formed by the Mid-Atlantic States.

The Consortium is a regional model designed to improve regional preparedness in the areas of homeland security and emergency management by facilitating dialogue among state government leadership and increasing interaction between state and local governments; industry/private sector; universities; and non-profits organizations. Participating states include Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.

In addition to the many familiar programs that Delaware Citizen Corps is conducting, they have created Communication Corps, an initiative to leverage the resources statewide of the volunteer and amateur radio communities. Delaware includes many different volunteer communications organizations and realized that an overarching council needed to be produced to help coordinate those efforts while not competing against other organizations.

Delaware Communication Corps has participated in a variety of regional exercises including two from the Delmarva Emergency Task Force (Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia), many exercises for Region III including the U.S. Department of Defense through the Military Affiliate Radio System.

Bob and Marny on behalf of their State Director of Emergency Management, their State Citizen Corps Council, and their entire Program partners in Preparedness, thanked the Board of Directors of the All Hazard Consortium. “We gratuitously accept this award and see this as a validation of not only Delaware’s efforts in Citizen Preparedness but as a validation of the terrific Citizen Corps Councils’ in our Region. Your mission to help create new resources and funding opportunities for states to support regional multi-state collaboration efforts from all stakeholders is indeed the forward thinking we need to be better prepared to Plan, Respond and Recover.”