Statewide Planning Has Implications for Marin's Volunteer Mobilization Centers

A recent statewide effort to address the needs of communities for disaster volunteer management has implications for Marin communities that have previously embraced the Volunteer Mobilization Center concept.

Background
In 2004, the California Service Corps contracted with the Bay Area's Ready to Respond program to develop a disaster volunteer management plan template for use by local governments throughout California. The template was designed to be an annex to the Emergency Operations Plans of both cities and counties. The template was completed and disseminated in November 2004 to all county offices of emergency services in the state with a recommndation that it be shared with all cities within each county. While adoption of the template is not mandated by state government, many counties and cities are likely to do so because of other mandates or simply because they see the value of having such a plan.

EVC Replaces VMC Model
One feature of the template is likely to be of particular interest to Marin cities and nonprofits that had previously planned to host Volunteer Mobilization Centers (VMCs). The template introduces an Emergency Volunteer Center (EVC) model that is based largely on the VMC concept, with two principal differences:

• Unlike VMC's, EVCs are not limited to activation for catastrophic disasters only; they may be activated at the discretion of the local government agency for any and all disasters.
  
• EVCs, like VMCs, may still be hosted by city government. What is different is that if a nonprofit hosts an EVC, it would necessarily be in partnership with city government.

What's Ahead for Marin
At this point we do not know which cities in Marin might be interested in adopting the new plan template. VMCs hosted by city government will find very few differences in the new EVC model beyond those noted above. A nonprofit organization that wishes to host an EVC to serve its local community should initiate discussions with city government on how the two can collaborate.

Discussion Planned
Brown Bag discussion on the new template, led by one of its authors, will be offered by CVNL this spring. All cities and nonprofit organizations that had previously committed to hosting VMCs, as well as those that wish to get involved now, are invited to send representatives.