Literacy Programs Responding to Communities in Crisis

Reaching Communities in Crisis with Safety Literacy

The groups most at risk of being killed or injured in home fires and disasters such as hurricanes or floods include older adults, young children, people with disabilities, and members of low-income households. In addition, some 90 million adults in the U.S. have limited reading ability, a serious barrier to learning skills such as how to install and maintain smoke alarms, how to prepare a home fire escape plan, how to create a family disaster plan, and how to assemble a disaster supplies kit useful for a range of potential disasters. To compound the problem, these adults are often the caregivers for members of other high-risk populations.

It is challenging to reach high-risk audiences with information about their safety at home, especially information that establishes both an understanding of their actual versus perceived risk of injury from fire and disasters and a desire to reduce that risk.

That’s why the Home Safety Council, a national non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, DC, created the Home Safety Literacy Project with two national partners – ProLiteracy Worldwide and Oklahoma State University’s Fire Protection Publications. The Project enables local safety agencies and adult literacy providers to work together to decrease the number of deaths and injuries caused by home fires and other disasters. Specially developed Project materials are available to literacy educators nationwide, at no charge.

Through this Project, the Home Safety Council is focusing on adults with low literacy and those with limited English skills – an important national strategy to make homes safer. The primary audience is adults who are learning to read through local literacy providers. Their families, including young children and older adults are the secondary audience. The participants may be individuals whose English reading level is low and who desire to build that skill, as well as those whose primary language is not English.

The Project provides the tools and a delivery system to unite literacy providers who have direct contact with this audience with fire and life safety educators who have the expertise and commitment to teach the public.

The Project model and the materials used by participants were developed by leading professionals in the areas of adult literacy education, as well as fire and life safety. They were pilot-tested in seven communities across the country during 2004-05. One of these pilot sites was in Plano, Texas.

During pilot testing, literacy teachers and tutors used as part of their regular classes specially designed educational materials that include key safety messages. The instructors also informed learners about safety services provided by the local partner agencies and organizations, such as home safety surveys and installation of residential smoke alarms.

Feedback from pilot site leaders, as well as instructors and learners, identified how the model and materials could be made even more effective. Most critically, it showed that safety education delivered through this kind of model can make a difference in people’s lives.

Why is the Home Safety Literacy Project unique from other safety education initiatives? Traditional home safety education programs are based on reaching the target audience through delivery of a specific presentation or activity. For example, a safety educator may visit a meeting of a community association to talk about residential fire sprinklers. There may be no opportunity for valuable follow-up discussion in the days or weeks that follow, after people have processed the information, talked with others at home, and considered options. The Project uses real-life stories, discussion, and direct feedback to present key safety principles in a non-threatening environment—a literacy tutoring session or classroom. Here the literacy instructor can help learners build on their existing knowledge about safety and answer questions related to their specific needs and interests. The lessons take place over a period of time during which the application of learning at home is stressed. This direct relationship enhances the potential for changing a person’s behaviors and attitudes about fire and other disasters.

At the local level, the Project partnership includes U.S. career and volunteer fire departments, emergency management or homeland security agencies, safety-oriented community-based organizations, and local literacy providers.

The following items are included in the Home Safety Literacy Project:

• Video Guide for Leaders and Educators Teacher’s Guide
• 4 large posters and 8-1/2" x 11” versions of same
• 3 colorful pictograms
• Black and white copy of the pictograms
• DVD-based Flash presentations
• Four-page newspapers for adults who read on a 5th – 6th grade level
• Easy readers for adults with limited reading ability
• 4-page illustrated version of each of the easy readers

More than 6,000 literacy providers received the first edition of the Project kits in September, which focused exclusively on home fire safety. Additional materials with content on fire safety and disaster preparedness will be mailed in February 2006. If you did not receive the initial Project kit in September and want one, please sign up at the Home Safety Council Expert Network to receive the materials at no charge. Sign up online at http://www.homesafetycouncil.org/expert%5Fnetwork/expertnetwork.aspx

Nearly all of the Project materials are available for free downloading at the Project Web site: www.home safetyliteracy.org

With these tools and resources, the Home Safety Council can assist literacy educators to form partnerships with community-based fire and life safety educators. Together, they can make great strides in reaching hard-to-reach people and help them be safer and better prepared to deal with fires and other disasters.

Rocky Lopes is a consultant who specializes in disaster preparedness and risk communication. He works for the Home Safety Council and several other agencies and organizations. Prior to that, he served as Manager of Disaster Education for the American Red Cross. Lopes has received numerous national awards for his work in public education and outreach, as well as in building collaborations among federal agencies and non-profit organizations.