DENTON, TEXAS – FEMA welcomes Wyatt Reed from Paragould, Ark., as one of the 15 national selectees for the 2019-2020 Youth Preparedness Council (YPC).
FEMA created the YPC in 2012 to bring together young leaders who are interested in supporting disaster preparedness and making a difference in their communities by completing disaster preparedness projects nationally and locally. The 15 council members are attending the Youth Preparedness Council Summit in Washington, D.C., from July 16-17, to meet with FEMA leaders and other youth preparedness affirmers to prepare for the year ahead.
Wyatt Reed learned of the value of emergency preparedness through his family’s planning and response to natural disasters in Arkansas. He serves as the co-chair on Greene County’s Youth Preparedness Council and Arkansas’ Youth Preparedness Council, where he won Arkansas’ 2019 Individual and Community Preparedness Award. Wyatt is also a member of the FEMA Region 6 Youth Preparedness Council. In these roles, he promoted a “Student Tools for Emergency Preparedness” (STEP) initiative in local schools and currently plans to start a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) in his school.
“Young leaders like Wyatt are the future of emergency management,” said Region 6 Regional Administrator Tony Robinson. “We look forward to working with him and seeing his ideas for community preparedness become reality.”
During his time on the council, Wyatt would like to supply and train more schools to handle mass casualty incidents. He envisions building a program that includes aspects of Stop the Bleed and CERT, but that is tailored to teachers’ needs. He also intends to develop a curriculum to build threats and hazards awareness, specific to his region.
To learn more about the FEMA Youth Preparedness Council, please visit: www.ready.gov/youth-preparedness-council.
FEMA’s mission: Helping people before, during and after disasters. Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/femaregion6 and the FEMA Blog at http://blog.fema.gov.
