Meetings, Conferences and Education Programs

Annual Meetings
Regional Leadership Seminars
National Public Policy Forum for Disaster Relief

Annual Meetings

The first activity of NVOAD was meetings of the entire membership. From its very earliest days the practice was to have an annual meeting in January or February each year. These meetings had a business component which was, of course, essential to the life of the body, but equally important was the element of the meeting given to exchange of ideas on disaster response and training aspects for those in attendance. The following list illustrates some of the topics taken up at annual meetings through the years:

• Government/Voluntary Cooperation in the Eighties (1984) - The Voluntary Viewpoint by Richard Schubert, President, American Red Cross and The Government Viewpoint by Dennis Kwiatkowski, Chief, Individual Assistance Division, FEMA.
• Panel Discussion: Report of Study of Unmet Needs of Disaster Victims - see also p.28.
• Introduction/ Remarks by FEMA Directors (1986),(1991).
• Disaster Mitigation by Sharon Hardesty, Hazard Mitigation Branch of FEMA (1988).
• Panel on Non-traditional Disasters (1988) - Panelists: Kenlynn Schroeder,Director, National Disaster Response, Church World Service, on Southeastern U.S. Drought of 1986; Charles Robinson, Chief, Superfund Branch of FEMA, on Toxic Wastes; Valerie Tallman, Central Maryland Chapter of ARC on Amtrak Train Wreck at Chase, MD.
• Panel on Technological Disasters: A Challenge to Voluntary Organizations (1989) - Rev. Karl Reko, Counselor to the community and victims of the dioxin disaster in Times Beach, MO and Pastor of a Lutheran Church in Chicago and Consultant to the Inter-Lutheran Disaster Response gave An Overview and Implications for Advocacy; Rev. William DuVal, Coordinator for World Service, Presbyterian Church (USA), and Kenlynn Schroeder discussed Possible Roles of NVOAD and Voluntary Organizations.
• Catastrophic Earthquake Plan (1990) - Bobby Baines, External Relations, Disaster Services, American Red Cross, and Kenlynn Schroeder of CWS with an overview by Jane Kushma of ARC presented the concept of operations under such a plan and how voluntary organizations responded to the Bay Area Earthquake
• Catastrophic Disaster Plan Update (1991) - Report by Robert Vessey, National Director of Disaster Services, American Red Cross, on development of the Federal plan growing out of the catastrophic earthquake plan. A later development was adopted by FEMA as The Federal Response Plan (for P.L. 93-288 As Amended), and published in April 1992.
• Voluntary Organizations Relationships with State and/or Local Emergency Management Agencies (1992) - Joseph LaFleur, Director, Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency made the primary presentation followed by a panel, of State VOAD leaders consisting of Larry Buckner, Adventist Community Services, Atlanta, GA; Kay Hunley of the American Red Cross, Baltimore, MD; and Dee Stenger, The Salvation Army, Kansas City, MO.
• Voluntary Leadership - Managing in the 21st Century (1992) - address by Commissioner James Osborne, National Commander of The Salvation Army.
• Remarks at the 1992 annual meeting by Mrs. Elizabeth Dole, President of the American Red Cross, upon being presented by Chairperson Walter French with a certificate of recognition by NVOAD, honoring her as "the volunteer of the year" for her outstanding leadership in the field of human services and for helping to focus attention on the importance of volunteers by her example. For one thing she served her first year as President of ARC as a volunteer.
• The Paradigm Shift in Disaster Response (1993) - Keynote presentation by Monte Sahlin, North American Director of the Adventist Community Services.
• "After Hurricane Andrew - Changing Roles" (1993) - presentations: Military support by Col. Michael E. Thomas, Military Support Division under the Secretary of the Army; The FEMA Role by Robert Volland, Chief, Individual Assistance Division, FEMA; the Red Cross Experience by Donald W. Jones, General Manager of Disaster Services, ARC;; and The Church Response by Kenlynn Schroeder, Director of Disaster Response, Church World Service.
• Keynote Address to the 1994 NVOAD Annual Meeting by James Lee Witt, Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency.

[back to top]

Regional Leadership Seminars

Early activity consisted primarily of annual meetings providing a forum for interested organizations. In a few years NVOAD expanded the meetings program into national and regional conferences. The first regional conference was held in San Francisco in 1976. Regions were defined in terms of groups of contiguous States dividing the country into six or seven areas (the specific definitions changed over the years with combinations of FEMA/Federal agency regions used in later years). These regional conferences, called leadership seminars in later years, were attended by thousands of voluntary agency leaders and disaster workers at the State and local levels across the country. The NVOAD leadership paid careful attention to the planning and conduct of the conferences. Two conferences were planned for each year and scheduled to be held in different regions of the country so that a seminar was held in every region on a regular cycle. A planning process was soon developed to assure timely content and interesting presentations. A local host group was designated by the member organizations active in the region to plan the meeting in cooperation with a coordinator from NVOAD. Care was taken in selection of speakers and leaders to assure quality and variety in presentations and timely substance featuring the latest developments in disaster response. Usually the keynote speaker was selected from among the Executive Committee members and known for dynamic presentation. Also at the end of the conference a "closer" also from the Executive Committee summarized the conference and "brought it all together." Seminar attendees were asked to complete anonymously an evaluation of each of the presentations on the agenda and to rate them on a numerical scale. These evaluations were summarized and comments used in future conference planning. In time a manual was developed to assist host groups and the NVOAD representative in planning the conferences. It was called Guidelines for National/Regional Leadership Seminars. Of course the program did not spring into being fully matured; it was developed over the years with the help of seminar participants, host committees and national leadership. Improvements were quite frequent, and several revisions of the manual were published.

The Leadership Seminars formed the backbone education program of NVOAD for many years, but the development of State and sub-state regional VOADs seemed to call for change. As State VOADs became more numerous, they served as host committees for regional seminars. But the regional seminars seemed to be competing with State VOAD periodic meetings for attendance by disaster leaders and workers. One problem for NVOAD leaders was that regional seminars provided contacts and exchanges between States whereas State VOAD meetings did not. Nevertheless attendance at the regional seminars began to drop off. Since NVOAD was committed to the support of State VOADs as a means of attaining many of its goals, a directional change in the conference program seemed in order.

In 1990 the State VOAD Consultant, Neil Molenaar, reported that a major problem in VOAD activity was leadership continuity. This suggested a change in the education program toward more emphasis on State leadership training. This was supported by a request from ten State VOAD leaders attending the NVOAD annual meeting in January 1991 that the Executive Committee of NVOAD convene a national meeting of VOAD leaders in conjunction with one of its early meetings. This was done in September 1991, and beginning in 1992 that request resulted in the Annual State VOAD Leadership Conference program to be held in a different section of the country each year but open to the leadership in every State..

This new emphasis led EXCOM to discontinue holding regional seminars with the Region VII conference scheduled for October 1992 and concentrate NVOAD efforts on the new leadership conferences and encouraging State VOADs to have annual training conferences of their own. Additional discussion of the new approach to leadership training is found in the section, State VOAD Program Development and Organization on pp.14-16.

A listing of regional conferences held over the years is shown in Table 5 on the following page.

[back to top]

National Public Policy Forum for Disaster Relief (the NVOAD Wingspread Conference)

The first national conference sponsored by NVOAD was the National Public Policy Forum for Disaster Relief, May 23-25, 1979 at the Wingspread Conference Center, Racine, WI with the support of the Johnson Foundation. It was the intent of NVOAD that the papers presented at the conference and collected into the proceedings would "facilitate an ongoing dialogue between the governmental and non-governmental sectors to continue to develop public policy for domestic disasters that provides a comprehensive and efficient operation that not only saves lives but also minimizes the financial and emotional crises of the disaster victim in this country." All parties involved need "to have a clear understanding of their roles" and "a spirit of trust and understanding" that makes possible a critical level of cooperation, according to the introduction by Brother Joseph Berg, Chairman of the NVOAD Forum Planning Committee. The proceedings were published by NVOAD under the title, Proceedings: National Public Policy Forum for Disaster Relief.

Table 5, Regional Conferences, 1976-92

National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster

[back to top]

Section 3 of 6 [Back] [Next]