Conceptually, OCEVA began as a way to provide much-needed financial support to a single Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) in a time of ever-tightening municipal budgets. The founding board members, both with advanced CERT training and both in CERT leadership positions, along with key advisory committee members, realized the critical need for multiple levels of disaster preparation training. Most people have the desire to care for their families and neighbors, but for time or interest reasons are not candidates for the commitment required by active CERT membership. Many communities want to provide education and training but lack the expertise and resources. OCEVA has the expertise and is marshalling the resources to fill both those needs.

We are a proactive group and realize disasters can come in a variety of forms. Our training plans and the programs we offer provide basic survival and recovery skills that are severely missing in our populace. In any major situation, professional first responders (fire and police) will have so much to handle that they will be unavailable to many of us. Properly prepared and teaming with other trained individuals, you will have the basic tools to be your own first responders thereby increasing your survival chances regardless of the challenges you face.

Early in an organization’s life, there often are more exciting program ideas than there are resources, both financial and personnel to support them. OCEVA is no different. We have great ideas galore, but have chosen a crawl, then walk, then run approach to implementing them. We think our NEST (Neighbor Emergency Survival Training) and neighbor4neighbor programs have huge potential to make meaningful differences in people’s lives, so that’s where we will focus our initial efforts. All the while, however, we are developing additional programs to introduce when the timing is right. We want a firm foundation to allow for solid and sustained growth.