Campus fire safety grants awarded to Minger Foundation

The Michael H. Minger Foundation was awarded a $175,000 DHS Fire Prevention and Safety grant for two projects to help improve fire safety for students across the nation.

One project is to coordinate efforts to have students perform community fire safety projects with their local fire departments.  The idea behind this effort is that by having students engaged in providing fire safety in their community it will provide an opportunity for the students to learn about fire safety first-hand.  This will take place during two weeks spanning 9/11 – September 10 to September 24.  This project builds on President Obama’s call for national service when he signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act into law in 2009.

The Minger Foundation will facilitate bringing students, schools and fire departments together to provide opportunities for the students to undertake community service projects such as smoke alarm installations, fire safety education or installing sprinkler systems in Habitat for Humanity homes.  The focus will be on providing fire safety to some of the most at-risk people in a community such as the elderly, children and those living in low income circumstances.  These have been shown, repeatedly, to be high-risk demographics that see a much higher incidence of fires, fatalities and injuries.

“This project provides students with the opportunity to do some meaningful community service that will have a significant impact,” said Gail Minger, president of the Michael H. Minger Foundation.  “It also helps the fire departments by providing them with additional support to do community outreach at a time when so many fire departments are having to cut back on these important fire safety programs.  Finally, students learn about fire safety in one of the most effective ways – by doing fire safety.”

The Minger Foundation will be developing content that the local fire departments can download and use as a part of the program.  In addition, the foundation will also be developing a social media campaign to help promote the program to the students and also provide “one stop” registration for students that want to take part.

“We are working on making this as seamless as possible for the students and fire departments to get together,” Minger explained.  “We’re taking advantage of many Internet resources such as social media tools to get the word out and to make this an effective program.

“For this first year, we will be working closely with a small number of fire departments and schools in developing and delivering the programs,” said Ed Comeau, publisher of Campus Firewatch who will be working on the project.  “However, it is open to any community or school that wants to be a part, use the material that we develop and take the idea and run with it – and we encourage schools and fire departments to use the idea to engage students!”

A second project that was funded was to develop fire safety information for students with disabilities.  This came out of a 2007 grant project awarded to the Foundation that looked at the present state of fire safety on campuses for students with disabilities.  The report from this project, which is available on the Campus Firewatch web site (www.campus-firewatch.com) identified gaps in fire safety awareness and education for these students.  This project is geared towards closing that gap and providing information and resources that both schools and fire departments can use in raising awareness and educating this demographic.

One of the significant gaps identified in the report was a lack of coordination between the offices that were responsible for assisting disabled students and the department on campus that handled fire safety.  Each department had a tendency to assume that the issue of fire safety was being addressed by others when, in reality, it was something that was not being addressed adequately – if at all.  By providing educational material it will help to raise the awareness of the issues and bring these different organizations together to address the needs of students with cognitive, sensory and mobility impairments.

Ed Comeau, publisher of Campus Firewatch, who was the team leader on the first Minger grant will also be working on both of these projects.

For more information, please contact either Gail Minger at gminger@mingerfoundation.org or 850-621-5161 or Ed Comeau at ecomeau@campus-firewatch.com or 413-323-6002.  As both projects move forward there will be additional information available at www.mingerfoundation.org and www.campus-firewatch.com.