SARA Happenings Extra 2001
Table of Contents
Hi, This is an extra edition of our regular mailing intended to improve communication within the Search and Rescue community in Alberta. It's going out to over 160 e-mail addresses that are listed as the primary contact of SAR Alberta member groups or which were requested to be added to the mailing list. If you want to be added or removed from the list, please send mail to sara-happenings-ctl@castrov.cuug.ab.ca. The SAR conference registration form for "When Disaster Strikes" March 1, 2, & 3, 2002; to be held at the West Harvest Inn, 17803 Stony Plain Road, Edmonton, will shortly be available for download from the SAR Alberta website. By-Laws and Policies Committee. The By-Laws and Policies Committee is charged with discussing policy issues and making recommendations to the SAR Alberta Board. You're invited to participate by reading about the policy issues and submitting your comments to the committee. Issues currently under development may eventually determine: * the number of Regions, their boundaries, and which Members are a part of which Region. * how tied elections are resolved. * how open the Board shall be to receiving submissions from members of the SAR Community. * how disputes between Member Organizations and between a Member Organization and the Association as a whole are resolved. * procedures for elections that have more than one candidate. * whether organizations that share individual SAR volunteers are treated differently than organizations that don't. If you are interested in any of these issues or would like to bring other issues to the committee's attention, please see the committee's web pages at http://www.saralberta.org From Brad Marshall, President SAR Alberta. It is with great pleasure that I inform you that the Municipal Affairs Minister Guy Boutilier, formally announced on November 7th, a special grant initiative that will provide, among other conditional sponsorships, $150,000 for ground search and rescue training. For those of you that would like to view the formal news release regarding the announcement, it may be viewed at: http://www.gov.ab.ca/acn/200111/11541.html Note: At the bottom of the release in the backgrounder section, the references are to LAST year and we are currently developing a Civil Emergency Response course, not LUSAR. This is the second year SAR Alberta has secured needed funding in support of our member organizational efforts($300,000 in total now), and we view the continuation of this grant as validation by the Government of Alberta of our provincial association and capacities of our member organizations to respond when called upon. To show our appreciation to Disaster Services for enabling this funding to occur, I spoke briefly to Executive Director Ron Wolsey this morning, and thanked him and his staff for their efforts on our behalf. Mr. Wolsey stated that he and the provincial government valued the contributions of SAR Alberta and our member organizations, and was glad funding was made available again this year to invest in search and rescue response for Alberta. As demonstrated last year, we now know that getting the grant is only the first step in attaining success with this initiative and I thank Fred McFall, Paul Olmstead and John Rotheisler for making their involvement on this project and providing assistance to me, a priority. Had these people chosen to put their SAR Team or personal pursuits or whatever else, as a higher priority than their support SAR Alberta on this project, then this $150,000 grant wouldn't have happened, and I thank them for their dedication. The SAR structure and response capacity in Alberta will only improve if people invest the time. So now is the time to identify the challenges that were incurred with this past year's grant activities, so we may create and implement solutions that will enable this initiative to become the outstanding success it should be. Even though the Training Committee has the primary responsibility to coordinate this attack, each of you have a role in contributing to the effort that enables that goal to be achieved. Our success this year, in overcoming the obstacles before us, will directly influence next year's opportunities for subsequent funding. Once we receive the formal documentation confirming that the grant was structured to fund the training we requested, we will follow up with you and the member organizations regarding what training and host SAR Teams were specifically targeted. What I can tell at this time is that we will be including references to the grant announcement in the Cross Traxx newsletter being mailed out next week or so. Also the Training Committee is meeting in Red Deer on Nov 17 (if anyone is interested in attending, contact Fred McFall), and will be coordinating a meeting of all the SAR Teams targeted to host training courses, before the grant application deadline (which as this point looks like it's been moved up from last year (March 7th) to February 1st this year). Lastly, should you or anyone you come into contact with have questions pertaining to this year's grant coordination, please contact Provincial Training Coordinator Fred McFall, and only contact me if you can't reach Fred and your need is urgent. As President, I need to move on to other challenges facing SAR Alberta and am unable to maintain close involvement with this one project out of many (even though it has been personally rewarding for me to secure this funding for SAR). Let's keep the good times rolling, and please do what you can to continue enabling SAR Alberta to do great things for our member organizations and our province. Date: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 8:32 AM For your information, and in case the wording of the official announcement
(for those who got it) was a bit confusing, the news is that the 25% pre-commitment
for NIF submissions from the provinces and territories is now gone. It
is replaced by a requirement for everybody to submit proposals that are
cost-shared (fed depts included), but not to any specified level. In-kind
contributions now count as cost sharing. Of course, the more a proposal
cost shares, the more points it gets in the scoring process. Also, the
more partners involved in a proposal (whether they contribute money or
services or not), the more points the proposal will score.) It's taken
a while, everybody. John Chaffey The publication dates for future mailings of SARA Happenings has been moved to the middle of each month. Please note that the new deadline for material will be the 10th of each month. Does your group have an event posting for the SARA Happenings mailing? If so, to see that it is sent out on time send information 1-1/2 months prior to the dates wished advertised. It will then give ample notice to those reading it to respond. Contact: Chris Hoare Ph. 403-628-3802 gpsurvey@telusplanet.net
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