Food Banks Alberta and Food Banks BC recently announced a new joint training system program for Emergency Response Preparedness. Revealed during Canada’s national Emergency Preparedness Week, this new system will provide the more than 200 participating food banks with an emergency response platform supported by the Canadian Red Cross before the start of the traditional natural disaster season.
“Like thousands of homes and businesses in Fort McMurray, the local food bank was also devastated due to the wildfires,” says Arianna Scott, Interim CEO of Food Banks Alberta of the importance of the system to provincial food banks, in a press release. “In addition to having to implement their emergency response plan to support their community, they also had to respond to the fires and rebuild their facility, which created serious strain on their ability to be the support system to tens of thousands of people.”
The online emergency preparedness portal was developed with ETHOS Career Management Group, with a focus on helping individual food banks to develop emergency plans and documentation. Efforts were also made to deliver the portal on portable formats like flash drives and DVDs, in the event of limited or nonexistence access to an Internet connection.
“We are living in more uncertain times than ever before,” says Scott. “This portal provides an extra layer of assurance to our member food banks, but is also an accessible and low-barrier method to communicate critical information across our networks safer and faster.”
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