C.E.R.T. GOES INTERNATIONAL
Jim Lancy, Emergency Management Coordinator, City of Arvada, Colorado

Sister Cities International (SCI) awarded the City of Arvada, Colorado one of four grants as part of an exchange program with an emergency management focus. These grants, which were funded by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, were awarded to American cities with sister cites in predominately Islamic counties. The other cities awarded these grants were: Ft. Worth, Texas (Bandung, Indonesia), Houston, Texas (Baku, Azerbaijan) and Tucson, Arizona (Almaty, Kazakhstan). The City of Arvada has two sister cites one of which is Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world with a small population for its size of approximately 17 million citizens. It was formerly part of the Soviet Union and gained its independence in 1991. The city of Kyzylorda is 12 time zones away from Colorado, which places it exactly on the opposite side of the earth. The people of Kazakhstan speak both Kazakh and Russian and English is required in all primary education. We found the Kazakh people friendly, hospitable and very curious about America.

Our proposal was to present a train-the-trainer Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training to instructors in Kyzylorda so they could re-teach these emergency response skills to the citizens of Kyzylorda. We also presented an overview of the Incident Command System (ICS) to the Ekim (mayor) of Kyzylorda and his ministers. Our goal was to bring to the officials and people of Kyzylorda some very practical skills to enhance their ability to respond to disasters.

Our team was comprised of myself, a retired fire fighter and currently the Emergency Management Coordinator for the City of Arvada, Arvada City Councilman Craig Smith, Arvada Police officer Walt Parsons, Brian Michaels, a registered nurse, Mike Coen, the grant manager, and his wife Dottie who supplied administrative support. We arrived in Kyzylorda on October 21st and spent eleven days in country. Official SCI documents were signed, tours and official meetings took place and we presented our training over a two-day period with our students presenting to the citizens of Kyzylorda two days later.

Arrangements were made for the use of an overhead projector and our overheads were translated prior to our leaving the states (in Russian). This worked well for our presentation. Certificates were prepared a head of time and signed by the instructors after we arrived. The instruction outlines and overheads were left with the trainers for re-teaching of CERT as well as CERT student and instructor manuals (in English, of course).

We found the Kazak people eager to learn new skills, proud of the response and recovery systems they have in place, and extremely friendly and hospitable. CERT skills are universal and, as we have shown, can be taught to diverse peoples throughout the world.

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