Communities Coming Together. Greater Los Angeles. Safety and Preparedness Fair. Sun, Nov 13th

Sunday 11/13 is going to be a great day in Los Angeles. The Greater Los Angeles Safety & Preparedness Fair will be taking place at Exposition Park. This event will be heavily driven by CERT on several levels. we're talking about everything from the set-up, logistics, and even the programming. Therefore, the organizers are asking that ALL OF YOU push the attached one sheeters (English & Spanish) out to your communities. We want to make sure we get everyone we can out there to Expo Park. This effort has been over a year in the making and we want to make sure this event is a success. 

Please plan on coming with your families, friends, and everyone else on 11/13. There will be a lot of things, enjoyable things, for you and the family to enjoy on that day. We'll see you there. 

CHIN THAMMASAENGSRI

South Bureau Coordinator & 

LAFD CERT Call Out Team Dispatcher

"Head 'em up, move 'em on!"

FEMA Celebrates a “Year of Firsts” During National Native American Heritage Month, Reinforces Commitment to Supporting Tribal Nations

 FEMA Advisory

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November marks National Native American Heritage Month, an opportunity for every person in the nation to reflect on our shared nation’s history and honor the Tribal Nations and tribal citizens who called this land home long before the United States became a country.

This National Native American Heritage Month, FEMA is celebrating a “year of firsts,” with the appointment of the agency’s first-ever National Tribal Affairs Advocate, the release of the agency’s first-ever National Tribal Strategy, the first National Advisory Council meeting in Indian Country and the first tribal citizen to hold the position of council chair in FEMA history.

At FEMA, Tribal Nations and tribal citizens are daily partners in emergency management and disaster resiliency. Tribal Nations are often the first and sometimes only responders to disasters that occur in Indian Country. 

The agency celebrates and honors the Nation-to-Nation relationships between FEMA and the 574 federally recognized Tribal Nations across the country. 

“As we reflect on the achievements, contributions, sacrifices, cultures and traditions of Tribal Nations and tribal citizens -- past and present -- we are also looking to the future,” said FEMA’s National Tribal Affairs Advocate, Ms. Kelbie Kennedy.

 “We are committed to ensuring that FEMA improves our coordination with, and support of, all Tribal Nations across the country. When Tribal Nations have the support and resources they need, everyone in Indian Country, both Native and Non-Native, become safer.” 

To ensure FEMA continues to advance its commitments to align the agency’s capabilities to the needs of Tribal Nations, FEMA has appointed the first tribal affairs political appointee in both FEMA and Department of Homeland Security history. Ms. Kelbie Kennedy, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma who was born and raised in her Nation’s reservation in Southeastern Oklahoma, joined FEMA in October of this year. 

As the first FEMA National Tribal Affairs Advocate, Ms. Kennedy advises the FEMA Administrator and the agency on all matters pertaining to tribal affairs, ensures that Tribal Nations and tribal citizen needs are front of mind for FEMA and aims to ensure the agency lives up to its treaty and trust responsibilities to all Tribal Nations. 

Last week, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell attended the National Advisory Council year-end meeting hosted by the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, making it the first-ever council meeting held in Indian Country. During the meeting, the council held focused discussions on improving Nation-to-Nation relationships and supporting tribal sovereignty. 

At the end of the meeting, the Administrator appointed Jeff Hansen, Director of Community Protection for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, as the National Advisory Council chair. Mr. Hansen is the first tribal citizen to hold the position of council chair in FEMA history. 

Earlier this year, the agency also released the first-ever 2022-2026 FEMA National Tribal Strategy to focus engagement and collaboration on the unique needs of sovereign tribal nations. The strategy is designed to foster stronger collaboration and information sharing between FEMA and Tribal Nations by providing the agency with a roadmap to refine and elaborate on major strategic goals and objectives we are working to achieve. Key issue areas were added to address requests from tribal leaders and tribal emergency managers, including tribal-specific technical assistance and tailored resources to support tribal emergency management programs.

To further address the unique needs and considerations of Tribal Nations, FEMA is also creating a Tribal Cybersecurity Grants Program, led by FEMA in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). 

The new grants will address cybersecurity risks and threats to information systems owned or operated by, or on behalf of, Tribal Nations. 

Earlier this year FEMA consulted with Tribal Nations per its Federal trust and treaty responsibilities and has improved the program as a result. Tribal leaders provided important input during the tribal consultation that will significantly improve the final grant program. Detailed information about the tribal cybersecurity program will be available soon.

Malawi envoy: 'I'm learning to be a lobbyist'. From magistrate to ambassador

 https://washdiplomat.com/malawis-esme-jynet-chombo-from-magistrate-to-ambassador/  

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Malawi’s Esme Jynet Chombo: From magistrate to ambassador

ByLarry Luxner

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November 1, 2022

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Esme Chombo has been Malawi's ambassador to the United States since Jan. 1, 2022. (Photo by The Washington Diplomat)

If Americans have heard of Malawi at all, it’s likely because singer and actress Madonna adopted four of her six children from there. Or perhaps they’ve seen The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, a 2019 Netflix movie directed by and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as William Kamkwamba, a 13-year-old engineering genius who’s determined to save his family and village from famine.

Other than that, few people know much about this obscure, landlocked African nation that’s home to 20 million inhabitants. Perhaps it’s because Malawi is also one of the poorest countries on Earth, ranking 169th out of 191 jurisdictions in the 2022 Human Development Index, a list compiled annually by the United Nations Development Program.

But that’s five places better than last year’s index, which put Malawi in 174th place out of 189 countries. While its per-capita purchasing power rose from $1,080 to $1,466, life expectancy at birth dropped from 64.9 years to 62.9, and average years of schooling fell from 6.1 to 4.5—largely a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping Africa and the world.

Esme Jynet Chombo is Malawi’s ambassador to the United States. Like Madonna, she’s a firm believer in adoption; five of her six children are not biologically hers. Chombo, 68, arrived here this past January and immediately discovered that being an ambassador is nothing like her previous 30-year career in Malawi’s judicial system.

“It’s a different world altogether,” she told us. “A judge is supposed to be conservative, but as a diplomat, I’m learning to be a lobbyist, to lobby for my country and to lobby for women. It’s a big shift.”

Esme Chombo, Malawi’s ambassador in Washington, greets Oumou Thiam Hann, chargé d’affaires of the Embassy of Guinea (at left) during an Oct. 26 conference on the global status of women’s health. In the middle is Roya Rahmani, Afghanistan’s former ambassador to the United States. (Photo by Jessica Latos)

Chombo is one of 37 women ambassadors currently serving in Washington; 11 of them are from Africa. As such, she spoke to us on the sidelines of an Oct. 26 conference on global women’s health organized by The Washington Diplomat and Hologic, a Massachusetts-based medical technology company focused primarily on women’s health.

In the 2021 Hologic Global Women’s Health Index, Malawi ranks 105th among 122 countries included in the survey. Taiwan ranked the highest for the second year in a row, with a score of 70 out of 100, while Afghanistan ranked dead last, scoring only 22.

Tropical cyclones devastate Malawi’s economy

“My personal view is that from what I have seen, when a government changes, women’s issues are not always highlighted. We seem to be going backwards and forwards,” said Chombo, who is also Malawi’s non-resident ambassador to Canada and Mexico. “This has not been very good, although the present administration now is doing everything it can to uplift women’s issues.”

Chombo said that of Malawi’s 20 ambassadors serving overseas, eight are women. In addition, close to 40 women are in key decision-making positions in government, including the inspector-general of police and the secretary to President Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera.

Known as Nyasaland until independence in 1964, Malawi is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast, and Mozambique to the east, south and southwest. Roughly the size of Pennsylvania, Malawi was visited during the 17th century by Portuguese explorers who began slave trading—an industry that flourished between 1790 and 1860.

Landlocked Malawi, about the size of Pennsylvania, is located in southeastern Africa and was once known as Nyasaland. (Photo by Larry Luxner)

Malawi’s capital is Lilongwe, and its second-largest city, Blantyre—where Chombo was born and raised—is named after the Scottish birthplace of explorer, missionary and anti-slavery campaigner David Livingstone. Lake Malawi, the world’s fourth-largest freshwater lake by volume, takes up one-fifth of the country’s area.

Largely agricultural, tobacco accounts for nearly 70% of Malawi’s exports, followed by tea (9%) and smaller amounts of soya, peanuts, maize and beans. Yet the country’s economy has been devastated by two recent cyclones that wiped away almost one-third of Malawi’s infrastructure.

“We lost 130 megawatts from the national grid. As I’m speaking now, Malawi is in almost total darkness. The situation is very serious,” Chombo said, estimating damage to power utilities at around $120 million. “We asked the Millennium Challenge Corp. for assistance to rebuild the energy sector but they said no, they’re not going to help us again.”

The year’s first cyclone, Ana, struck in January, followed by Gombe, in March. As with previous natural disasters, the government declared a national emergency, and foreign aid came pouring in. Yet in the long term, little has changed since independence. Even today, more than 40% of Malawi’s national budget is funded by foreign assistance, and the country has at least 700 NGOs registered to receive money from overseas.

“If we don’t have enough energy, we cannot commercialize our agriculture, or go into value-added crops or mining,” Chombo said, noting that Malawi has abundant deposits of an oxide mineral known as rutile, as well as highly sought-after rare earth minerals “that even America needs for its electric batteries.”

COVID-19, cholera and gay rights

Despite dire predictions of millions of Africans dying from COVID-19, that didn’t happen. In fact, Malawi fared relatively well, with only 2,683 deaths officially reported as of Oct. 30 since the start of the pandemic nearly three years ago. Nor is Malawi worried about the Ebola virus, which this year is plaguing the East African nation of Uganda, way to the north.

Esme Chombo, Malawi’s ambassador in Washington, addresses an Oct. 26 conference at the Dutch Embassy on the global status of women’s health. (Photo by Jessica Latos)

“Whether you believe it or not, Africans have to go out daily to work. They have to fend for themselves,” Chombo said. “During the pandemic, our people were out in the open, getting fresh air and exercising. They got infected but it didn’t stay in their systems. What we have learned is that the more you breathe in fresh air outdoors, the more your lungs are able to respond to the infection.”

What really concerns her people, the ambassador said, are malaria and cholera—the latter sparked by contaminated floodwaters in the wake of the two cyclones that struck Malawi earlier this year. So far, 120 people have died of cholera, she said, with the disease present in 22 of the country’s 29 districts.

Before wrapping up, we asked Chombo about gay rights in Malawi, where—as in many other predominantly Christian countries in Africa—homosexuality is illegal. In 2009, two young men were arrested for celebrating their engagement ahead of a planned wedding and charged with “unnatural offenses” and “indecent practices between males” under sections 153 and 156 of Malawi’s Criminal Code.

Their 14-year jail sentence was “one of the longest sentences for consensual same-sex conduct anywhere in the world in recent memory,” according to Human Rights Watch, though the two men were later pardoned by Malawi’s then-president, Bingu wa Mutharika. One year ago, the country’s first gay pride march took place in Lilongwe, and was attended by hundreds of people.

Malawi does have a death penalty, but only for murder, not homosexuality, said Chombo. And in any event, she said “it’s only on paper,” since no executions have been carried out since 1994.

“No one has been persecuted for being LGBTQ+. They have the right to march, and to practice what they believe in,” the ambassador told us. “We know they’re there. It may not be legalized yet but they’re not being persecuted like in Uganda—and otherwise no one is stopping them.”

FYI & Participation: White House: Upcoming Economic Impact Briefings!

 

*National Latino Farmers & Ranchers Trade Association (NLFRTA) is an active member of American Agr-Women   Throughout the fall, the White House Office of Public Engagement will be hosting a series of Economic Impact briefings focused on the impact the Biden-Harris Administration’s economic investments have had on communities across America, with a particular focus on how these landmark achievements are creating lasting change for different segments of the American people. A few of these are taking place this week and we would love to have you join those that are of interest. Please note, these briefings will take place over zoom. This invitation is open to all stakeholders - please forward to other community leaders as you see fit. More invitations to come as additional briefings are scheduled.   To confirm your participation please click the links below.       LGBTQI+ White House Economic Impact Briefing  WHEN: Wednesday, November 2nd, 12:30 PM Eastern Time  WHO: Senior Advisor Keisha Lance Bottoms and other senior officials WHERE: Zoom – RSVP here: https://pitc.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_aj8bCS0IQh-nt9pCfHQuUA African-American Economic Impact Briefing  WHEN: Wednesday, November 2nd, 3:30pm ET WHO: Senior Advisor Keisha Lance Bottoms and other senior officials WHERE: Zoom – RSVP here: https://pitc.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_3IXIjfWJTZ-pZQuiB9d7tA

New: Cyber Security Grant Program $1 Billion

 The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which President Biden signed into law Nov. 15, includes $1 billion for the creation of a new cybersecurity grant program to be awarded to state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) governments over the next four years. GPD is partnering with the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to establish the new program. This new grant program reflects the growing threat of ransomware, denial of service attacks, system intrusion, and other cyberattacks against public agencies and infrastructure.

The grant program will be administered by FEMA—and structured similarly to our existing Homeland Security Grant Program—with CISA serving as a subject matter expert for assessing grant applications.

 

The legislation provides a formula for the allocation of funds to states to then distribute, to include local and rural communities. FEMA and CISA are working with the SLTT community to make sure the program goals and objectives meet their needs. In the upcoming months, DHS will issue a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) which will outline the application process and identify how eligible entities—states, tribes, and territories—can apply.

This grant program will provide the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) a vital tool to help its  SLTT partners build cyber resiliency by providing financial support to implement the guidance, practices, and capacity building that CISA offers, and address identified vulnerabilities within and across their networks.