Welcome to the Texas VOAD Website!
The Texas Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (Texas VOAD) is…
a unified organization that fosters, facilitates, and maximizes the ability of our members to serve the communities and the people of Texas with more effective service and more efficient utilization of resources through the Guiding Principles:
Cooperation | Communication | Coordination | Collaboration.
Executive Committee Update
I remember as a child being told that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. I believe we will be seeing that this year. It has already been an active and early, by about 2 months, tornado season across the south east, with 15 tornadoes occurring in Texas alone (reference). The end of February saw a blizzard named “Rocky” bring close to 2 feet of snow to areas of the Panhandle, while other areas of the state were fighting fires spurred on by high winds.
We truly never know what we will be called on to respond to next. Being prepared is so important, for our families, our neighbors, our community, our county and our state. June 1st is right around the corner. We need to get through what is shaping up to be a busy spring first.
An opportunity to become better prepared is a few weeks away at the Annual Texas Emergency Management Conference being held in San Antonio, TX. Find more information here. The TDEM conference is a wonderful opportunity to not only learn more about the disaster cycle, but also to learn about who your colleagues are and what talents they bring to that cycle. I always come away energized. I hope you will too.
Other opportunities for training can be found at the TDEM Training page and the FEMA Independent Study page.
The important thing is to keep honing our skills so we can effectively cooperate, communicate, coordinate and collaborate. And, if you would like your organizations’ training schedule linked on the Texas VOAD webpage, please contact the Communications Committee.
See you in San Antonio!
Liza Carol Chigos
Vice President – Texas VOAD
American Red Cross – Texas State Program Manager
 |
Member Spotlight
|
 |
Texas Food Bank Network (TFBN) provides a unified voice among food banks in support of our common mission to end hunger in Texas. Utilizing our 20 member food bank’s consisting of over 3,900 agencies; we are able to service all 254 counties in Texas before, during and after a disaster. TFBN members distributed over 289 million pounds of food in 2011.