Our Plan

The ADRN Plan - Overview

  1. Growing Crisis
  2. City of Austin, Surrounding Counties & American Red Cross Challenge
  3. ADRN Model - Our Solution
  4. Benefits to Body of Christ, Families affected by Disaster and our Community
  5. ADRN Model - Disaster Scenario
  6. How to Join the Network

Growing Crisis

Through past disasters like 9/11, Katrina, Ike and the Cedar Rapids flood, we have quickly found out that our government, local agencies, churches and ministries alone are not big enough to embrace and handle the magnitude of destruction these disasters bring. Specifically government and local agencies are not equipped to minister to the overwhelming emotional and spiritual needs of individuals affected by a disaster.

Today, there is a growing sense of urgency amongst Christian leaders that at any given time anything could happen and the church must be ready! With the threat of future hurricanes, tornadoes, escalating threats of terrorism, bio-chemical warfare, and pandemic catastrophes, the body of Christ in greater Austin, like Joseph in the Bible, need to be equipped to respond to the emotional, physical and spiritual needs of these individuals.

In preparation for these long-term disaster relief efforts, ADRN is developing a church network that will organize, mobilize and connect the body of Christ and its resources, in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.

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The City of Austin and Surrounding Counties Challenge

In our planning stages, ADRN has collaborated with the City of Austin, Surrounding Counties and other disaster relief organizations. In 2009, city and local government enties challenged and opened a great opportunity for ADRN and the body of Christ with 5 critical needs they asked us to fulfil:

  1. Help them find the 354 shelter managers needed to operate the 88 city and surrounding shelters in Greater Austin.
  2. Help provide volunteers to staff their shelters.
  3. Provide critical resources needed for every family coming into the shelters, such as hearing aid batteries, blankets, gas cards, bus tickets and other personal items.
  4. Provide intermediate shelters within churches facilities that become backup locations to Greater Austin shelters, which typically close after 3-5 days.
  5. Adopt/Sponsor families affected by disaster to provide long-term relief.

ADRN believes we can meet the needs of our city and surrounding counties through a unified effort of churches, ministries and businesses coming together.  Our end goal is to provide our city and local government with a list of our organized resources, a large number of volunteers and enough intermediate shelter space to meet their needs.

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ADRN Model - Our Solution

ADRN's plan is to divide the greater Austin area into 12 sectors and develop each of those sectors to respond to needs within a matter of hours after a disaster strikes. Each sector will have an ADRN HUB coordinator that will organize and mobilize the community of churches, ministries and businesses within the sector to effectively work together.

Each church, ministry or business participating will be asked to assign a dedicated "disaster relief coordinator" that will act as a liaison between their organization and ADRN.

ADRN's HUB coordinator will primarily work with the disaster relief coordinators (DRC) in their sector to collect data, help them raise up volunteers to staff shelters and/or become an approved shelter site, help organize vital resources within their organization, provide shelter and vital preparation training and tie them into the network.

Each church that joins the network will be categorized into four categories, depending on the size of the church. To keep it simple, these categories are: X-Large, Large, Medium or Small. By doing this, it will help us determine the number of families or evacuees a church community may sponsor, depending on the number of people affected by the disaster.

Each ministry and business that joins the network will be also categorized, into six categories: Food, Clothing, Shelter, Furniture, Warehouse, and Transportation. By categorizing ministries and businesses, this will help ADRN determine in advance our networks resources and help us work efficiently and effectively in a timely manner.

Our ultimate goal is to make sure every family affected by a disaster is sponsored by our network of churches to provide for their emotional, physical and spiritual long-term needs in an effective, efficient and organized manner. We believe this is the Lord's heart too. Also, our plan allows each church to be autonomous in their relief efforts while connecting the body of Christ together and keeping things simple. ADRN will provide additional resources to participating churches through our network of ministries and businesses that will assist in providing vital resources to people affected by a disaster.

ADRN will provide training for all disaster relief coordinators, volunteers and shelter managers within these participating organizations, in cooperation with the City of Austin, Surrounding Counties and other agencies charged with the responsibility of responding to disaster.

Once the network is in place, our goal is to run disaster drills and test the infrastructure. We can accomplish this by utilizing the network to help the poor and needy within our city.

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Benefits to People affected by a Disaster and our Community and the Body of Christ

We believe as churches and the body of Christ join together in Greater Austin to sponsor and meet the emotional, physical and spiritual needs of people affected by a disaster, we will see exciting results:

  • People in need will see immediate and long-term help
  • Transformation of lives
  • Body of Christ working together as one compassion army for Christ (John 17:21)
  • Church members using their gifts and talents to serve others
  • Body of Christ will bless the City of Austin, Surrounding Counties and other disaster relief agencies and our community by serving them.

Now, imagine Greater Austin with a communication infrastructure in place that could mobilize, organize and connect the body of Christ and their resources in a matter of hours, much like the internet has laid a platform for businesses to do business across the globe or the way interstates have laid a platform to provide roadways for our nations transportation needs. All of these examples, once in place, create limitless possibilities to work from and communicate through, for greater purposes that can glorify God!

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ADRN Model - Disaster Scenario

Now that you read about the details of the plan, let's run through a likely scenario and see how the plan works to meet these important needs:

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Louisiana coast, 6200 plus evacuees flooded our city. Here is how ADRN could respond with a network in place today:

As evacuees arrive in Greater Austin, they are first directed to the local governments disaster shelters. This is called the First Wave Response.  After the first 3-5 days, most of these city school and large auditorium shelters will close their doors to resume business operations. At this point, evacuees will either be directed to hotels and apartments or be redirected to church intermediate shelters (2nd Wave Response). With 6,200 evacuees and/or 2,067 families (estimating 3 people per family), churches on the network could help sponsor families based on their size, the number of evacuees coming into greater Austin and the number of churches participating in the network. Using this example and estimating 150 churches within the network ready to sponsor families, XL churches would sponsor 40 families, large churches 27 families, medium churches 18 families and small churches 7 families. The local congregations sponsoring the families are expected to help provide for the immediate needs of every family adopted/sponsored (Acts 2:44-45, 4:32-34). All supply shortages will be met through the ADRN network of resources, national and global support. Every ADRN HUB coordinator will oversee and coordinate disaster relief resources while working with disaster relief coordinators in every sector.

ADRN believes there are three key points about the plan:

  1. The plan is simple
  2. Every participating organization operates autonomously
  3. The plan promotes unity within the body of Christ
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How to Join the Network

Click here to join the network.

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*2010 ADRN Training Conference Videos - click here
 
EVENTS
 
CASHP Shelter Refresher Course Training: If you were trained in previous years as a CASHP shelter manager, you are required to take the CASHP refresher course once a year before being deployed into a shelter.  Our local government has asked you to take this refresher course asap since we are in hurricane season. For more information, click here. 
 
Sept. 7th-9th - Evacuee Care Training (CISM) @ Austin Baptist Association (3811 Harmon Ave., Austin) from 6PM-10PM.  ADRN highly recommends this training for volunteers who are called to help people in times of crisis and/or called to the mission field. This training will equip participants to deal with the mental, emotional and spiritual issues most people encounter in times of disaster, including trauma, learning debriefing techniques and much more. The training will be presented by Melissa Slagle, a consultant and International Trainer, a Certified Traumatic-Stress Specialist (CTS), Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), and a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT). All participants will receive an internationally recognized certificate of completion in Disaster Psychological 1st Aid and CISM/CISD (Critical Incident Stress Management/Critical Incident Stress Debriefing). This training is also recommended for teens 16 years of age and above and for the elderly. Training costs is $70. To register, please click here.
 
Sept. 10th-11th - Evacuee Care Train the Trainer Course (CISM Advanced) @ Austin Baptist Association (3811 Harmon Ave., Austin) from 6-10PM on Sept. 10th and 9AM-5PM on Sept. 11th.  The training will be presented by Melissa Slagle.  All participants need to take the standard 10hr Evacuee Care/CISM course at least 2 times before taking the Train the Trainer course.  In order to apply for this course, please email your name, contact information, ministry/professional background information and the CISM training dates you have attended to admin@adrntx.org.  Training costs is $90 (Saturday lunch included).
 
Sept. 14th - Biblical Readiness Training @ ADRN Offices (2301 W. Anderson Lane, Ste. 105) from 6PM-9PM.  The training will be presented by ADRN Founder, Daniel Geraci.  The training will cover what it means to be Biblically Ready, 7 key provisions the Lord has given every Born Again Christian and how to use these provisions to enable us to become spiritually strong in times of disaster.  This class is free but participants must pre-register.  To register, please click here.
 
Oct. 12th, 14th, 19th, 22nd & 23rd - ADRN CERT Training (Community Emergency Response Team) 6PM-10PM on all dates but Saturday, 10/23 from 9-3PM.  Training will be held at Hill Country Bible Church NW (12124 Ranch Rd 620 N, Austin - RM#2.112).  ADRN highly recommends this training, which educates volunteers about disaster preparedness for hazards that may impact their area and trains them in basic disaster response skills. These include Fire Safety, Disaster Preparedness, Disaster Medical Operations, Light Search & Rescue, Disaster Psychology, Terrorism and a Disaster Simulation. Using the training learned in the classroom and during exercises, CERT members can assist others in their neighborhood or workplace following an event when professional responders are not immediately available to help. This training is nationally recognized and supported by FEMA and the Office of Emergency Management/Department of Homeland Security.  Training costs is $40.  Participants must click here to register.
 

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