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.