Ready Plan
Create or update your household or facility disaster plan. Know where you will go, who will do what, how you will communicate, and how everyone will be accounted for.
Preparedness & Resilience
Ready Before the Storm
Meeting Today’s Needs. Preparing for Tomorrow.
Preparedness is more than having supplies. It is knowing what to do—and practicing it before you need to do it.
Hurricanes and other emergencies can change everyday life in a matter of hours. Hurricane Melissa reminded us that being prepared means more than having water, food, flashlights and batteries. Families and community organizations also need a plan they understand, can access and have actually practiced.
Inspire and Serve’s Ready Before the Storm initiative helps households, children’s homes, residential care facilities, women and girls, and community organizations strengthen practical preparedness before the next emergency arrives.
Community Readiness
How Ready Is Your Household?
Five minutes can tell us a lot about how prepared our communities really are.
The anonymous 5-Minute Community Readiness Check helps Inspire and Serve understand how households prepare for hurricanes, whether disaster plans have actually been practiced, what Hurricane Melissa revealed, and where additional preparedness education and support may be needed.
There are no right or wrong answers. What you share helps us better understand community needs and strengthen future preparedness efforts.
Preparedness Is More Than a Checklist
We Prepare for the Things That Matter.
We pack before a trip.
We practice before a game.
We rehearse before a performance.
We prepare our clothes before an important day.
So why would the first time we practice our disaster plan be during the disaster?
Don’t Just Have a Plan. Run the Plan.™
Walk It. Check It. Practice It.
The Ready Run™
Having a disaster plan is important. Knowing whether that plan will actually work is even more important.
The Ready Run™ is Inspire and Serve’s practical approach to helping households and community organizations move from simply having a disaster plan to actually practicing it.
Participants walk through their plan, locate essential supplies, check emergency contacts, think through power and communication outages, identify special needs, practice what they would do, and uncover gaps before an emergency exposes them.
Finding a problem during a Ready Run is not failure. Finding the problem is exactly why we practice.
If Your Ready Run Finds a Problem, the Ready Run Worked.
The Ready Before the Storm Approach
Ready Kit
Gather and check the supplies, medicines, water, documents, emergency contacts, lighting, backup power, hygiene items and other resources you may need.
Ready Run™
Walk It. Check It. Practice It. Test whether your plan can actually be carried out before an emergency.
Ready Check
Keep preparedness current. Update your plan when people, medications, phone numbers, equipment, transportation, living arrangements or other circumstances change.
Preparedness is not something we do once. It is something we maintain.
Lessons from Hurricane Melissa
15 Things + 1 Hurricane Melissa Taught Us
Hurricane Melissa taught Jamaica important lessons about what happens when power, water, telecommunications, transportation, health services, shelter systems and everyday routines are disrupted at the same time.
And perhaps the most important question of all…
Having a Disaster Plan Is Not the Same as Being Prepared to Execute It.
Hurricane Melissa revealed important lessons about preparedness, communication, continuity of care, vulnerable populations, community resilience—and the difference between having a disaster plan and actually being prepared to execute it.
Inspire and Serve has translated these lessons into an engaging preparedness conversation designed to help organizations and communities think differently about what it really means to be ready.
Available for community conversations, presentations, webinars, workshops and facilitated preparedness sessions.
Is your organization, business, association, church, school, community group or professional gathering interested in learning more?
Preparedness Must Work for Everyone
Emergencies do not affect everyone in the same way. Preparedness planning should consider the particular needs of children, young people in residential care, pregnant women and mothers with babies, women and girls, older adults, persons with disabilities, people with chronic medical needs, and others who may require additional support.
Inspire and Serve has developed and continues to develop preparedness tools and activities that help the organizations serving these populations think beyond supplies and consider continuity of care, communication, medication, safeguarding, accessibility, emotional well-being, transportation, documentation and recovery.
Bring it to your community
Let’s Get Ready—Together.
Inspire and Serve brings practical preparedness conversations and activities to communities and the locally rooted organizations we support.
Our community preparedness engagement can include the 5-Minute Community Readiness Check, interactive preparedness conversations and activities, practical Ready Before the Storm resources, and opportunities to participate in the Ready Run™.
Churches, community groups, children’s homes, residential care facilities, women’s organizations, schools, service organizations and other groups interested in strengthening preparedness are encouraged to connect with us.
We cannot control when the next storm will come.
We can control how intentionally we prepare.
Don’t Just Have a Plan. Run the Plan.™
The Ready Run™
Walk It. Check It. Practice It.
Ready Before the Storm
Meeting Today’s Needs. Preparing for Tomorrow.