Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Spring 2013 | Page 20
The Humanitarian
Disaster Institute’s
Ready Faith manual
offers suggestions that
help a church leadership
team prepare for the
worst. Dr. Jamie Aten,
co-director of HDI,
suggests five initial ways
every person can begin.
prayer
Pray for God’s guidance on how best to
use your own and your church’s unique
resources and ministries that are already
available in the event of an emergency.
For example, if your church has a
ministry to shut-ins, begin with
a plan for checking on these
people.
planning
prevention
Take inventory of the dangers to your
community and identify what to do to
prevent and reduce injury and property
damage.
preparedness
Five
simple steps
everyone can
practice
take
consider what you’ll need
to take care of your own
family’s food, water, heat, and
shelter in the event of a disaster.
Make a plan for how your family will
communicate in an emergency. Once
you’ve planned for your own family,
consider who may be vulnerable in your
community—and plan ways you might help
elderly or disabled neighbors or families
with lots of little ones.
bring in necessary resources. Write
down your plans and review them with
your family. update your insurance
policy and know exactly what’s
covered.
running through your plan helps you learn
what is likely to work and what won’t. it
also helps you to develop and maintain
new skills.
Meet the Students
Alice SchrubA PSy.D. ’17
Building communication Between a
chicago agency and local church leaders
to prepare christian humanitarian disaster volunteers,
practitioners, and scholars, hDi draws students from
ever-widening fields of interest.
Students from geology, computer science, and
applied mathematics classes have contributed to hDi
by helping develop a social networking site for churches
in the Japanese evangelical Association. upper-level
communication students will also soon be working with
hDi on a project to improve disaster messaging.
“Not only are we taking students into the field, but we
are trying to bring the field back to students through the
courses we teach and through the psychology research
lab,” says Dr. Jamie Aten, hDi’s co-director.
At least 60 participating undergraduate, masters, and
doctoral students are gaining from hDi research, travel,
and writing opportunities.
18 S P R I N G 2 0 1 3
Alice, who grew up in the hurricane and tornado
territory of Texas, knew she had found the right
place to pursue her graduate work when she came
across the hDi website. “Wheaton is one of the few
schools in the nation that offers faith-based training
in disaster mental health care,” she says. “Many
students don’t get the opportunity to collaborate
with professors and a government organization
at a high systematic level.” Through hDi, she
is working with the cook county Department of Public health to establish
a curriculum for churches to use in the event of an emergency. The city plans
to use the curriculum to train 50 to 100 church leaders at the end of May,
building trust and ties between the government agency and churches to
create a web of help for times of disaster.