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The University Promotes a Civil Resilience Network

The University Promotes a Civil Resilience Network

October 29, 2010

Homeland & Cyber Security

Last Sunday, Ben-Gurion University and Israel’s emergency authorities (Home Front Command) announced a new joint pilot project to build a local network for crisis response.

The university, which has over 17,000 enrolled students, pledged to involve thousands of students and workers in the project. The Home Front Command offered to teach these volunteers the skills, knowledge, and preparation necessary for a national crisis. Both parties hope that such a network of volunteers can provide necessary resilience to both the campus and the local community during a time of crisis

As Dr. Limor Aharonson-Daniel, Chief of the Emergency Medicine Masters Program, and the Founder of this pilot said: “at times of crises the needs of the civilian population will be greater than the available response of the emergency authority. The connection between the large population of our campus and the needs of the community seems natural, just, and will benefit all parties.”

The new pilot realizes the vision outlined by Reut’s National Resilience Team in its most recent report. Reut’s team calls for individuals, households, corporations, organization, public institutions, and others to organize themselves into a national Civil Resilience Network that can instill a culture of preparedness across every region and population.

The Ben-Gurion Pilot stems from discussions that began last year at the Civil Resilience Network Roundtable. Lead by Reut, the Israeli Trauma Coalition and the Home Front Command,  the event brought together 70 leaders from the business sector, the third sector and academic institutions with this very purpose: to catalyze projects and action towards a civil resilience network.

Following the conference, The Reut Institute published guiding principles on how best to implement a culture of preparedness in academic institutions (for the guidelines, in hebrew, click here). Underlying the publication was a fundamental belief that because academic intuitions posses unique assets—a young and motivated citizen body, extensive infrastructure, and deep knowledge of emergency preparedness—they can and should play a leadership role in national and local resilience.

The guiding principles call not only for the involvement of the student body in emergency preparedness, as done by the pilot project, but also recommend cooperation between academic intuitions on best practices and research.

The Reut Institute believes this pilot project marks an important step in the realization of its vision for increasing local and national resilience, and will continue encouraging all such similar steps.