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"Map Your Neighborhood" is an award-winning program developed by LuAn Johnson, Ph.D, at the State Of Washington's Emergency Management Division. In scope, it fits between the more familiar Neighborhood Watch and Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) programs; and its purpose is to organize residents to assist each other during a disaster. 
Note: The primary distinction between MYN and CERT is that CERT provides extensive response training, while MYN organizes your existing skills and resources into an effect response team. Neighborhood Watch focuses on crime prevention, and it complements both programs. You are encouraged to integrate your MYN, CERT and Neighborhood Watch organizations to the greatest extent possible.
To begin a MYN program, contact us to arrange a 90-minute presentation to you and your neighbors. We will explain the program and provide the booklets to document your organization: contact information; inventory of skills, equipment, and resources; gathering places; team assignments; team activation and response steps, etc. If you already have a neighborhood contact list, please bring it to the presentation. You are encouraged to supplement the booklets with an electronic spreadsheet for ease of maintenance.
After the presentation and initial gathering of information, your MYN group should meet periodically. You will want to discuss preparedness activities and response plans and, perhaps, to get to know each other better.
Tip: The neighborhoods that respond to disasters most effectively are those that are already friends, or at least know each other on a first-name basis.
To read more about MYN and to download study resources, please visit the website of Washington State's Emergency Management Division. These are the same resources we will bring to your presentation, so it is not necessary to print them out.
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