"Disaster risk reduction is too important to be left to the experts. Risk reduction begins at home, in schools, places of work and worship and throughout our local communities."

Margaret Wahlstrom, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Emergency Relief Coordinator at the United Nations

“Absolutely Everybody”

 

The First 24 Hrs. Foundation was established in 2004 as an NGO nonprofit charity organisation.  The foundation was established by an emergency manager from Australia of 30 years after personally witnessing that in the midst of natural and manmade disasters there is a “vacuum of critical time” where the victims wait for help. 

In massive disaster incidents the most prominent timeframe when the majority of lives can be saved is in the first 24 hours. 

Having a safety plan in place prior to an incident for The First 24 Hrs. can mean the difference between life or death, health or sickness, security or chaos. 

 

Let’s welcome The 303 Plan

 

“ The 303 Plan” (303 = spend 30 minutes, every 3 months with your family exercising your plan), was created to fill this gap and to better prepare both organisations and families to help themselves in the initial 24 hours after a disaster by creating and exercising safety plans

With an effective exercised plan in place, our communities are better prepared to be their own disaster first responders, helping to increase their survival chances until official help arrives.

 

The 303 Plan addresses important questions like:

 

• What would you do in case of a disaster?
• Where would you take your family? 
• Where could you go that was safe from fires, tsunamis, or earthquakes? 
• How could you get there?  What would you take with you?

The family emergency plan answers these questions. It engages the families in The 303 plan calling for "a simple and easy to understand plan exercise", even making it a fun family activity.  Due to the repetition in exercising the family emergency plan, participants can be ready to help themselves and knowledgeable to assist others.  This is one of the most profound aspects of this effort that we are sure will increase participation of families actually creating a plan.   Another profound benefit results to this effort is assisting to reduce non-emergency pressures to local resident first responder crowds as families with The 303 plans are trained to be self-sufficient for basic needs as during most major disasters have shown, calls to emergency services will go unanswered.   

The 303 plan is funded directly by citizen’s subscription, corporate donation and corporate subscription sponsorship to The 303 plan initiatives were created as a global educational outreach program for a family emergency plan that is to be "exercised/practiced quarterly" by families in order to keep the preparedness fresh and up to date.  In the case of corporate employees this will also help accelerate a return to work as soon as possible after an incident when directly tied to an official corporate disaster recovery business continuity plan

The 303 plan official quarterly exercise days are scheduled to occur on the 2nd Wednesday of January, April, July and October and then quarterly every year from this point forward.  The 303 plan has a monthly subscription cost of $5 per subscription, or a monthly corporate subscription sponsorship of $5 per employee that provides multiple alert paths on the Monday and Tuesday just prior to the targeted Wednesday exercise days.  These alerts (depending upon local availability and country specific laws) are sent in the form of e-mail, SMS and multiple social media technologies.  Training initiatives that include producing hardcopy resources for those areas of the world that do not have the benefit of technology will be generated from these funds as well.

 

Full Transparency

 The revenues generated by subscription, corporate sponsorship will be posted, updated and viewable online in their entirety.  The dispersal of funds in their entirety will also be posted providing complete nonprofit revenue transparency.  We strongly believe that every nonprofit organization that receives donations and funding should operate in this manner.  Doing so would help ensure that people know exactly where all expenses occur, and let them know exactly where their money goes.

Additionally, the foundation and The 303 plan process supports worldwide any other current family emergency planning organisations such as ready.gov, Red Cross and any other NGO, faith-based organization or local emergency management entity that provides family emergency plan templates.  This support comes in the form of the alerting process quarterly, 2 days prior to the official days of the 303 Plan exercise and periodical newsletters via e-mail sharing additional preparedness information as well as ways to make the process fun. No matter which family emergency plan template a family chooses to use, every individual on earth will benefit from this effort.

“Absolutely Everybody”

In the whole wide world