Holiday Travel...WITH KIDS

Guest Blogger: C4L Instructor Scott Allison

Ah! The holiday season is upon us. Egg nog, houses decorated for the holidays, classic holiday movies (my personal favorite is A Christmas Story!), spending time with family, and travel. If you are like me, travel means traveling with kids. Any parent can attest to the fact that traveling with kids can be a daunting task during any time of the year, but can be even worse during the holiday season. Why can the holiday season be so awful for traveling with kids? Stress, obviously, but also the winter season plays a major role. Winter brings up thoughts of snowball fights, watching the kids make snow angels, sledding down a large hill (local golf courses are great places for that). Winter, for me, brings up thoughts of people forgetting how to drive in the snow, watching for snow plows, driving more carefully because of wet/frozen roads, and preparing the car with a preparedness kit…not just for a preparedness kit for the car, but also for the kids.

Preparedness kits for the cars are fairly simple to put together. According to the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) Division of Traffic Safety, a car kit should include the following: a flashlight, blankets, candles, matches/lighter, empty tin can to hold the lit candles, water, extra gloves, ice scrapers, sand or kitty litter, flares, first aid kit, jumper cables, and non-perishable food. I personally recommend a collapsible snow shovel, a hand-held can opener, a set of snow boots, motor oil, and antifreeze. Some of the things in the car kit should be self-explanatory. Some of the items may not make a lot of sense at first. For instance the sand or kitty litter, these are great items to use to regain traction in places where traction is at a premium (i.e. a road with black ice). Extra gloves can come in handy in case you need dig out the car and you don’t have a shovel handy. You may ask “Why water?” Well it may freeze, but at least while it thaws you can still have liquid refreshment for your body. You could also include some Gatorade/Powerade/Propel for the people in the car and save the water for the car itself just in case you need it. Non-perishable food means granola bars, Pop-tarts, nuts, canned veggies/fruits, cereal, cereal bars, and other foods like that.

Preparedness doesn’t stop with the car. It continues with the kids. There are two different kits you should have available for the kids. The first kit is the parents’ survival kit for the car. This kit should include anything and everything the kid(s) would need to occupy themselves in the car so you don’t hear the dreaded “are we there yet” question 15,000 times in a four hour trip to Aunt Sandy’s condo. For example, videos, portable DVD player, game system (fresh batteries are a must), coloring books, crayons, washable markers, and picture books or novels (dependent on kid(s) age(s). The kid(s) should also have a disaster preparedness kit to take with them when they travel. It can be as simple as a backpack with some if not all of the following items: portable weather radio with a set of fresh batteries, flashlight, list of emergency numbers, granola bars or other similar non-perishable food items, water bottle, money, identification card, medications, insurance information, letter stating that those caring for the kid(s) can authorize medical care, baby wipes, and diapers if traveling with infants. A couple extra sets of clothes wouldn’t be a bad idea either. All of these things would be very beneficial not only to the immediate family, but also to those who are caring for the youngsters at the time.

So as you prepare for the holiday travel season keep the information stated above in mind especially if you are traveling with children. It may take a few extra minutes to prepare the kits, but those few extra minutes could be the difference between life and death.

Have a safe, happy, and joyous holiday season!

Baby, it's cold outside...

Next week, December 4-10, 2011, is National Influenza Vaccination Week (NIVW). It is a time for everyone to reflect on the importance of protecting ourselves and our loved ones from the complications of influenza “flu”.

The “flu” as it is most often referred to, can be a serious respiratory illness and even deadly to the very young, the very old and those with chronic medical conditions. At Chasing4Life it is important to us to respond to others in the face of a disaster….well, the influenza season is its own form of a winter disaster, a gift from Mother Nature every year. YOU need to prepare with a “flu disaster kit”…. An easy way to stay healthier this winter…. Because, “Baby it’s cold outside!” Family and friends will be gathering for the holidays and you don’t want to be the one sharing the flu!

Our safety elves have already “checked it twice” and know you’re on the “nice” list. Start protecting yourself today with the Flu Disaster Kit holiday shopping list:

1. Don’t let the flu get you! …Get a flu shot:

Stay healthy and ready to party with the kids when the Santa comes to town! CDC (Centers for Disease Prevention and Control) recommends that everyone 6 months and older get vaccinated against the flu. No longer are there all kinds of age restrictions. Over the last few years and even more so since the H1N1 “Swine Flu” outbreak in 2009, scientists have learned more about the value of “community immunity” and protecting the public from this serious virus.

2. Be a scrooge! Keep your germs to yourself! Use the 3 C’s: Clean, Cover & Contain:

Clean Hands! It is the number one, easiest and cheapest way to keep germs from spreading to others. Keeping hands clean by either killing the germs with (alcohol-based) hand sanitizer or by washing the germs down the drain with soap and water. Keep a bottle of sanitizer in your pocket, in your car, wherever you go and use often! Wash hands frequently when dirty!

Cover your cough – every cough, every time! Coughs spread germs through the air in a tiny wet mist of droplets. Cough germs spread to your eyes, nose, or mouth and on typical household surfaces CAN make you SICK. Keep those germs to yourself by turning your head away from others and coughing into your elbow area. Germs can spread from coughing even when you are feeling better! Have a lingering cough from a cold or flu virus? That cough can still spread germs, sometimes for weeks after your first felt ill!

Contain germs – many ways! In the trash can and stay home when ill!

Contain germs in the trash can! When you use a tissue, immediately throw it away into a trash can and then clean your hands with hand sanitizer or soap & water. Once you have germs on your hands,you can move those germs to other surfaces where they can survive on surfaces for hours. Many of these germs can be innocently picked up by yourself or the kids by touching something as simple as the TV remote, the bathroom or refrigerator door handle or the light switch. The germs then transfer from your hands and then to your eyes or nose with a simple rubbing or itching motion. Voile`! You have just provided the germs a happy new home and you feel ill in 24-48 hours.

Contain germs at home! Whether you work or go to school, stay home when ill! Do not struggle in to work or school as a “walking wounded” only to share those germs with others who will then be sick with YOUR illness in a few days.

Well, you’ve done your Flu Disaster Kit shopping and now you are trying to get the rest of your family to do the same….. What are their arguments?

Joseph complains: “I always get sick from the flu shot!”

Your answer for Joseph: Nope, Joseph, not possible, the flu vaccine contains a “dead” virus. Getting the flu shot merely motivates your immune system to develop resistance to the strains of flu for each specific year. And, yes, you must get a flu shot every year as the strains of flu virus change from year to year! So, Joseph, if you’ve gotten sick after the flu shot, this just means that you already had germs in your body and they made you sick about the same time you got your flu vaccine.

Mary complains: “I don’t like shots!”

Your answer for Mary: Now, if you have a great fear of “shots” Mary, then ask your doctor if you can “pick your nose”? The FluMist nasal spray vaccine may be the right choice for you as this is not a shot in the arm but a brief spray of vaccine up your nose. But there are things to consider when choosing FluMist – first, it is OK for healthy, non-pregnant persons aged 2 through 49 years. It’s also a live vaccine that’s been designed to not cause flu illness, but still have your body develop immunity. You will likely feel ill for a few days… need to prepare for that while taking care of your newborn son.

Cousin Elizabeth complains: “I don’t need the flu shot, I just need a cure for diabetes ‘cuz I want to eat Christmas sugar cookies!”

Your answer for Cousin Elizabeth: While the scientists are working to help you with your diabetes, they HAVE found a way to keep you and your loved ones safer during the winter flu season by developing the flu shot so people like you with a chronic illness can still enjoy the holidays together with your family!

This year’s flu vaccine is an overall good match of the flu strains moving around this season. Good news! This means that approximately two weeks after receiving your flu vaccine, the risk of developing significant illness from influenza is lessened because you’ve developed immunity to the flu. Each year thousands of people die due to complications of the flu. Getting the flu is serious, and even life threatening, to many people. It is extremely important for the health of the community for as many people as possible to become vaccinated. Just think of how many more days parents would have for summer vacation if they hadn’t had to spend a week at home with an ill child in January? How much easier it is for kids to go to school and learn in a healthy environment instead of their classmates coughing in their faces? What about your 3 month old baby at home who you decided to keep in a home setting and not in daycare? Well, if your second grader is not immunized, then she will likely be bringing home all those school germs to your infant. People are so quick to blame others, but the reality is, that they are part of the problem if not protecting themselves and their family members from the flu.

With flu activity increasing and family and friends gathering for the holidays, now is a great time to get a flu vaccine to protect yourself and your loved ones! It is not too late....prepare today!

Creating a BUFFER between your business and disaster

It was a scary night and the sounds of sirens kept you and your family awake. Luckily, your home sustained minimal damage, but upon arriving at the office, you realize that the problem there is much larger. Trees are down, power lines are down, and it appears that a portion of the office building has been damaged and water has damaged much of the interior. It could be weeks before things are back to normal.

More and more, businesses are writing continuity plans for just such a scenario, and the obvious focus needs to be on back-up systems, communication and order fulfillment… but there’s a problem…

You built this start-up company of yours from the ground up. You read every article, created a plan and your social media marketing campaigns literally built your customer base! How do you maintain that momentum while dealing with everything else? Half of each day for the next week you’ll be trying to dry out your file cabinets while attempting to find contractors! Don’t forget, internet around town is going to be difficult to access as well.

Using social media marketing is all about connections and momentum. Each day, businesses experience success simply because they have used social media to build their customer base and they have maintained that customer base by faithfully keeping up a level of momentum.

Now, for the next two weeks, your FaceBook Page will be a ghost town. Your Twitter will lay dormant. Momentum is gone while you recover from last night’s storm. You could lose followers, lose business, miss connections and opportunities and worse yet, lose months of hard work.

As a disaster preparedness educator and emergency response consultant, I am continually looking for that one solution to problems like this. In order for something to be a solution in my world, it has to be simple, affordable and easy to use. Buffer is that solution.

While you are inundated with the daily woes of rebuilding, recovering, reconnecting, restocking, re-ordering and well, let’s face it, re-thinking, Buffer can maintain momentum for your company behind the scenes. Your customers may never know you took a hit!

During a recent hospitalization, my clientele never even knew I was “out-of-the-loop”. Simple instructions given to my assistant along with my Buffer account password kept my social media campaign alive for over a week! I’m a Buffer-Believer.

According to the Business Institute of America, 25% of all businesses caught up in disasters do not reopen. Over the years, I have interviewed hundreds of business owners throwing in the towel after a disaster not because of poor insurance coverage, but because the thought of reconnecting with their clientele or customer base would “just take too long”.

Getting back to business after a disaster depends on preparedness planning today. Acquiring a simple Buffer account can secure your social media campaigning in the wake of a disaster and can easily be used by you in short bursts or can even be delegated to support personnel outside the disaster area until you are able to take the reins again yourself.

The folks at Buffer have created perhaps one of the easiest, most affordable business continuity protection tools available today without even knowing it. In a world that now thrives in a social media world, there is a way to stay alive even when the “real world” isn’t online.

Find Buffer

Cahokia's Kids and our philosophy on learning

If you are a parent of kids who go to school, you have probably heard many times expressions like "I hate homework", "I hate school" or "I don't want to learn". I have several children myself, and believe me, we’ve been through this a thousand times.
As a program coordinator or even a volunteer for an organization, it is easy to fall into the trap of supplying entertainment for kids simply because your educational events don’t go over well; it is probably because those educational events resemble that “school learning” and the “draw is certainly not going to be as great as that of a magician, a haunted house or a pizza party.
Here’s the truth: learning is harder when you do not understand WHY you should learn, how you learn and what you gain from learning. Unfortunately, most kids do not know what happens to them in the process of learning, so they only see the pain associated with it, instead of the pleasure. There is a reason why Chasing4Life programs are not only popular, but SUCCESSFUL, and by that, I mean that children RETAIN what they are taught at these events, and they actually are motivated to become educators themselves.
The brain
Our brain has 100 billion cells. Each cell carries a single thought, experience or feeling. This single thing, which the brain registers as an experience, moves in the brain the way electricity flows from the power station to your house.
We do not use all the cells we have in the brain. Some people say we use only a small portion of the brain, others say we use a bit more, but everyone agrees there are plenty of brain cells we do not use. Everything you do in life helps you use more of the cells in your brain. When you play, sleep, eat, laugh, cry or learn, you use more cells in your brain. The theory then? DO MORE STUFF.
When the same experience happens again and again, we no longer need to learn it - we do it automatically. Take walking, for example. At first, you need to concentrate on sending the right messages from your brain to your legs and back and you still wobble and fall down. But after some practice, you do it automatically - you no longer think about it. It is easy. The system I created years ago when I founded Chasing4Life is the same teaching system I use to this day and it is embedded in the Cahokia’s Kids Programming: repetition. People will ask if their child can attend only those programs in the series that sound interesting to them, but with this system we are using, each program overlaps the next, repeating lessons learned and intertwining them with the next lessons being taught. Each program begins with a review so the repetition is constant throughout the year.
How successful is this? We have children in Junior High School now that can still, to this day, repeat the severe weather facts they learned in First Grade at Chasing4Life programs!
“We need to be smarter”
We have a lot of phrases that the kids learn throughout the programs. One phrase is, “We need to get smarter”. The brain is like a machine that needs oil. Learning is that oil. The more you oil your brain, the better it runs. If you want to be smart, you need to make sure your brain works all the time. Every new thing you learn and repeat until it is automatic makes your brain machine faster and smarter. When you are talking about disaster planning and preparedness, you need to be able to operate like a machine quickly and there is no time to try to re-engage your brain last minute.
If you want to use your thinking brain more, you have to do more of the things that make you happy. If you need to learn something that is important to you, do it in a way that will make you happy. The Chasing4Life programs are fun, they relate to current events, they cause families to interact, and they are FUN. Remember, when you are happy, you remember everything.
So, if you have not done so yet, visit www.cahokiaskids.com and check out a new and exciting way to learn.

Winds of change

Texas oil tycoon H.L. Hunt was indeed a man who knew how to make a decision. The proof is in the fruit. He ended up a TYCOON.

Hunt once said, “Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.”

For years, operating Chasing4Life has been a labor of passion and love. Knowing that we were changing lives, knowing we were reaching massive amounts of people with a message that could save their lives all kept us going. Unfortunately, the financial end lacked. Several years ago, we decided to venture into the world of disaster response; the idea came easy as we saw need, and decided to meet it. We had no business plan, no financier, just a will to do the work.

The same happened when we saw the opportunity to present an I.C.E. Application for iPhones. The same happened when we got involved in animal rescue. The same happened when we began to create educational training DVD’s.

Now, none of these ventures came to us in the middle of the night or in visions. The calls, the requests, the inquiries and even sometimes the begging all came from people. When we presented the I.C.E. Application, it was because literally over 100 of our friends and clients said it was a great idea that they could support. When we got into disaster recovery work, it was because literally dozens of community leaders and church leaders said it was something they could get behind and support. When we began to create training DVD’s, it was because incredible numbers of agencies and organizations were requesting them.

But then there is reality. The check was always in the mail, but never arrived.

The I.C.E. App has been recreated because of the lack of support. We are taking it to a new market. The training DVD's are being distributed by a distributor. The TV show is being re-produced for a new market and a new network. A whole new staff for the C4LDRT will be announced by Christmas.

To those who never showed? We're still going...without you.

It is now November, and as the famous song says, the “winds of change are blowing”. A coldness is creeping across the country, changing the way people react, dress, operate, travel, plan and work. The same is happening at Chasing4Life.

Over the course of the last three years, we have “partnered” with many people and organizations only to find that the momentum was all ours. Many companies and organizations we have partnered with have yet to take their first step in cross-marketing, support or involvement. Simple Google searches pull up these “partners” who, some of which, have not even updated their websites in a year let alone have they thought to post something in the social media realm since the first months of the year. Momentum is non-existent, connection and communication seem to be all but vanished.

And then there are the people. The volunteers, the instructors, the administrators, the coordinators. So many that wanted to hitch themselves to Chasing4Life, yet as it was revealed, in name only to bolster other agendas.

With hundreds of thousands of school children educated in disaster preparedness, hundreds of agencies trained and tens of thousands of families reached, no matter what your opinion of the method, Chasing4Life has been a force to be reckoned with and our influence has travelled around the globe.

Now, as the winds shift outside, they shift inside as well.

As the new year approaches, we know that the needs are going to be great. Disasters are increasing, schools are beckoning more than ever. Agencies are looking for more of the quality Chasing4Life has presented in the past, and the time has come to follow in the words and footsteps of H.L. Hunt and make decisions, establish priorities, and get to work.

The new year is bringing a whole new application process for our C4LDRT volunteers and staffers. The arrival of the new mobile command unit has brought with it opportunity to serve like never before, but we have chosen to man not only the vehicle, but the entire organization with only those dedicated to training, serving, protecting and sacrificing. We are only going to consider those willing to answer the call.

Our sponsorships and partnerships will be similar. No more can we afford to spend time and effort on those with no momentum, no passion, no vision and no dedication. Companies and organizations alike will have to have their own momentum that they bring to the table; and a plan as to how to combine it with the power, momentum and reach of Chasing4Life.

As for our staff? So many have voiced concern that their careers are not lucrative enough, that there has been no real explosion of their popularity, no real increase in demand. With over 700 programs presented this year by only three of our instructors, we will leave this portion of the conversation with one statement: If the grass seems greener on the other side of the fence, it is perhaps because they maintain it better over there…

It is a year for change. The Mayans could have been right, after all, which means we have 12 months to leave our mark. If they were wrong, then this will be the year that changes Chasing4Life forever. We will reach more, teach more, save more, fix more, respond more, love more, laugh more and last longer.

Now, why the change?

It is because of the advice of the wise few. Tim. Chris. Theresa. Jeff. Hearts tuned to what we do and where we are going. It is also because we have a responsibility to be good stewards of what has been given us by Baron Services, HiViz, FoxFury, and NUPLA. Partners that have proven they understand partnership and the word “support”.

To those of you that have been that support? There is no way to ever thank you enough.

Why the change?

Because it’s time to take this whole thing to a new level.

The future's in the air
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change

(Scorpions-Wind of Change)