For those of you who may want useful things to fill these steamy days where air quality makes it too dicey to cavort outdoors, check out the following: The District Department of Emergency Preparedness provides directions for emergency planning including the process of creating a family plan and mapping evacuation routes. Last winter’s weather holding us in a snow-lock may induce us to sign up for District “Emergency Text Messages” from the Department of Emergency Preparedness.

This infor­ma­tion and reg­is­ter­ing for the emer­gency texts can be com­pleted at www.72hours. dc.gov. Con­tact Kim McCall, Emer­gency Plan­ning Spe­cial­ist, Dis­trict of Colum­bia Home­land Secu­rity and Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency at www. hsema.dc.gov, (202) 481‑3015, (202) 369‑6888 cell, or by email kim.mccall@dc.gov

For those with an inter­est in bet­ter prepar­ing high-rise build­ings, the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity has offered sev­eral tips which can be read at DHA website.

Build­ing man­agers, prop­erty own­ers, and build­ing secu­rity per­son­nel should get as much train­ing as pos­si­ble with regards to the nat­ural and man-made threats likely to occur in the city. For infor­ma­tion on this train­ing, please con­tact the HSEMA train­ing depart­ment, point of con­tact is Ple­sant Mann at 202–481-3052 or visit the web­site at www.hsema.dc.gov

Insti­tute of Peace Online Cer­tifi­cate Program

For com­mu­nity mem­bers who serve our com­mu­nity, the Insti­tute of Peace (our new FB neigh­bor) offers a num­ber of free self study, cer­tifi­cate courses online includ­ing “Nego­ti­a­tion and Con­flict Man­age­ment” and “Con­flict Analysis”.

The Edu­ca­tion and Train­ing Cen­ter (ETC) of the United States Insti­tute of Peace devel­ops both online and onsite courses on sub­jects related to con­flict man­age­ment and peace build­ing. These courses are designed for stu­dents in grad­u­ate and under­grad­u­ate pro­grams, as well as pro­fes­sion­als in diplo­macy, the mil­i­tary, law enforce­ment, aca­d­e­mics, civil soci­ety, non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions (NGOs) and inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions (IOs), both in the United States and around the world.

The mate­r­ial for these online courses is devel­oped to com­ple­ment their onsite pro­grams which are highly inter­ac­tive and draw heav­ily upon the pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ences of their par­tic­i­pants. Online courses may be taken on their own, or as an intro­duc­tion or follow-up to the Institute’s onsite programs.

The “CONFLICT ANALYSIS” course is the first in a series that will even­tu­ally include courses in nego­ti­a­tion, medi­a­tion and other activ­i­ties related to con­flict management—all avail­able online.

The course is struc­tured to bring numer­ous per­spec­tives on the sub­ject of con­flict analy­sis, as well as on the con­flict in Kosovo and the geno­cide in Rwanda. These per­spec­tives come in the form of audio clips culled from over twenty hours of inter­views con­ducted with Insti­tute train­ers, other noted spe­cial­ists, grass­roots orga­niz­ers, mil­i­tary pro­fes­sion­als, and indi­vid­u­als who were per­son­ally affected by the con­flicts. Effec­tive action is invari­ably the prod­uct of insight­ful analysis.

The course is approx­i­mately 65 pages in length. Through­out the course, you will be prompted to test your under­stand­ing of terms and con­cepts. When the course is com­plete, you will have the oppor­tu­nity to take a cer­tifi­cate exam. If you pass the exam, you will earn our Cer­tifi­cate of Course Com­ple­tion in Con­flict Analy­sis. Sum­mer school anyone?