DELARANEWS

Training Coordinator

Jim Yoder, W8ERW

ARES was active last evening when severe weather moved through the Ohio Section. Shelby in Richland County was hit rather hard with a possible tornado and destructive winds. This is what we prepare for and hope we don’t get to see. Seneca County ARES was activated and placed in an active standby status for possible support to our friends in Richland County. We have been fortunate not to have had many ARES activations in recent past. However, training and a readiness posture are necessary, and our focus should be on being prepared for those events that place us in a position to serve. Our training numbers have been steadily increasing with many of our members taking advantage of the higherlevel FEMA courses and locally offered opportunities to acquire additional skills. There are currently 1,027 active ARES members in the training database, 804 at level 2 and 154 at level 3. Overall 580 of you who have submitted training credentials have also registered with ARES Connect. A total of 8,154 certificates have been recorded in the database. As I look over these numbers and the individual registrations on ARES Connect, the overall statistics are similar. However, many who have submitted training documents have not registered on ARES Connect and many of those who have registered have not submitted training documents. The disparity is rather large and our goal moving forward should be to close this gap in both directions. I encourage everyone who has not done so to get registered on ARES Connect and where appropriate, report your hours for those activities in which you participate. I also suspect there are many who have not submitted training documents who have taken the 4 FEMA NIMS courses as well as many others that are appropriate for ARES activity. I certainly understand that not everyone is comfortable with all the computerization that we now live with every day. The benefits of a simpler life without all this electronic genius often sound attractive. One way we might increase participation is to schedule training sessions and facilitate an easy means to get more members NIMS trained and registered both with ARES Connect and submitted to the training database. I challenge all of our EC’s to explore with your groups any possible means to increase our use of ARES Connect and to assist those who desire NIMS training. Are you counting your time spent on NIMS and additional training and reporting it to ARES Connect? I’d like to hear your thoughts on this, and I am working on a method to report at the Section level, all the time on a monthly basis as I see documents submitted to the training database. I would anticipate an average time of perhaps two hours per certificate submitted and reported based on the certificate date. Certificates for Aux Comm and others would require substantial more time. Let’s hear your thoughts and ideas on how we can insure this time is captured and reported. ARES Connect registrations are compared to the training database to verify reporting of NIMS training. When you register on ARES Connect and indicate you have taken NIMS courses, please make sure that you have also submitted those documents for inclusion in the training database. It is also important to indicate correctly your county of residence on ARES Connect. Training documents are stored under your Residence County. You may associate with other than Residence County which is fine and often does occur. Let’s not confuse the two. Please do let us know as you submit training documents, both your Residence and Serving County. This will insure that we can quickly find your data when we need to respond to an emergency or disaster situation. I often receive training documents with a name only, no Call, No County information and no means to contact you. Folks be proud of that Call, you worked hard to earn it and please when you submit documents, identify yourself with your Call. Without this, I’m guessing at who you are and where you belong. All of this information is necessary to efficiently and quickly identify you when necessary to support and document you to our served agencies. Thanks to each of you who through your dedicated effort are supporting ARES and our Ohio Section being the very best. Please do not hesitate to contact me or any of our Ohio Section Leadership if you have questions or concerns. We are all here to assist you and make our hobby both enjoyable and productive for you. Thank you for your support,
DELARANews

Training

Coordinator

Jim Yoder, W8ERW

ARES was active last evening when severe weather moved through the Ohio Section. Shelby in Richland County was hit rather hard with a possible tornado and destructive winds. This is what we prepare for and hope we don’t get to see. Seneca County ARES was activated and placed in an active standby status for possible support to our friends in Richland County. We have been fortunate not to have had many ARES activations in recent past. However, training and a readiness posture are necessary, and our focus should be on being prepared for those events that place us in a position to serve. Our training numbers have been steadily increasing with many of our members taking advantage of the higherlevel FEMA courses and locally offered opportunities to acquire additional skills. There are currently 1,027 active ARES members in the training database, 804 at level 2 and 154 at level 3. Overall 580 of you who have submitted training credentials have also registered with ARES Connect. A total of 8,154 certificates have been recorded in the database. As I look over these numbers and the individual registrations on ARES Connect, the overall statistics are similar. However, many who have submitted training documents have not registered on ARES Connect and many of those who have registered have not submitted training documents. The disparity is rather large and our goal moving forward should be to close this gap in both directions. I encourage everyone who has not done so to get registered on ARES Connect and where appropriate, report your hours for those activities in which you participate. I also suspect there are many who have not submitted training documents who have taken the 4 FEMA NIMS courses as well as many others that are appropriate for ARES activity. I certainly understand that not everyone is comfortable with all the computerization that we now live with every day. The benefits of a simpler life without all this electronic genius often sound attractive. One way we might increase participation is to schedule training sessions and facilitate an easy means to get more members NIMS trained and registered both with ARES Connect and submitted to the training database. I challenge all of our EC’s to explore with your groups any possible means to increase our use of ARES Connect and to assist those who desire NIMS training. Are you counting your time spent on NIMS and additional training and reporting it to ARES Connect? I’d like to hear your thoughts on this, and I am working on a method to report at the Section level, all the time on a monthly basis as I see documents submitted to the training database. I would anticipate an average time of perhaps two hours per certificate submitted and reported based on the certificate date. Certificates for Aux Comm and others would require substantial more time. Let’s hear your thoughts and ideas on how we can insure this time is captured and reported. ARES Connect registrations are compared to the training database to verify reporting of NIMS training. When you register on ARES Connect and indicate you have taken NIMS courses, please make sure that you have also submitted those documents for inclusion in the training database. It is also important to indicate correctly your county of residence on ARES Connect. Training documents are stored under your Residence County. You may associate with other than Residence County which is fine and often does occur. Let’s not confuse the two. Please do let us know as you submit training documents, both your Residence and Serving County. This will insure that we can quickly find your data when we need to respond to an emergency or disaster situation. I often receive training documents with a name only, no Call, No County information and no means to contact you. Folks be proud of that Call, you worked hard to earn it and please when you submit documents, identify yourself with your Call. Without this, I’m guessing at who you are and where you belong. All of this information is necessary to efficiently and quickly identify you when necessary to support and document you to our served agencies. Thanks to each of you who through your dedicated effort are supporting ARES and our Ohio Section being the very best. Please do not hesitate to contact me or any of our Ohio Section Leadership if you have questions or concerns. We are all here to assist you and make our hobby both enjoyable and productive for you. Thank you for your support,