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ESSA 2007 Mini-Conference Announced!

January 23, 2007

ESSA 2007 Mini-Conference Announced! The theme of the first annual Emergency Social Services Association (ESSA) mini-conference will be information sharing and networking. There will be sessions for all types of people from Emergency Social Services Directors (ESSDs) to new Emergency Social Services (ESS) volunteers.

The conference will be held at the Justice Institute of British Columbia (JIBC) on Saturday, March 3, 2007 from 8:45am to 5:00pm.

The opening keynote is Moira McCulloch. Moira brings a wealth of Emergency Response experience to the mini-conference. She will be speaking about volunteering as that ESSD for Mayne Island and her work coordinating ESS as the deputy Emergency Coordinator for the Southern Gulf Islands. Moira is dedicated to emergency preparedness and bring a very unique perspective to the conference. You will quickly get caught up in her passion and motivation for 'our' work.

There will be a plenary session facilitated by Inspector Jess Ram, of the Vancouver Police Department. Jess has a master's degree in Counselling Psychology and headed up the Critical Incident Stress (CIS) Team for the Vancouver Police Department for a number of years. His involvement in this field led him to coordinate the Vancouver CIS team to travel to New York City to assists with NYPD member debriefing following 9/11. Jess is a dynamic presenter who understands the difficulty of working in the area of emergency response. He also knows how to find the right parts to laugh about - you won't want to miss this presentation.

There will be breakout sessions offered to allow volunteers to take away practical tips and tools to use with/for their own teams and responses. The mini-conference will address the question of leadership and how to get people to take on the 'big' roles on your team. New ESS volunteers will be shown how to navigate their way from Introduction to ESS courses to becoming Level 1 responders, volunteers for other organizations, volunteers for response teams, which travel around the province, possibly even the continent.

Rob Johns, new ESSA President and Victoria/Esquimalt ESSD, will help delegates leave the conference with an expanded understanding of ESSA and how it benefits individuals as well as ESS teams.

Registration is now available. Click below to access the registration page. (Please note that all refund requests will be handled post-conference)

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