Sha-King Smith has lived in New York City his entire life. But recently, the 19-year-old Brooklyn resident has seen extreme weather disrupt daily activities and threaten the safety of people he cares about. During flash flood warnings in the Red Hook neighborhood, his girlfriend often has to miss school to avoid being stranded by a public transit shutdown. In Far Rockaway, Queens, his mother frequently navigates downpours and fast-rising floodwaters while running errands.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I\u2019ve been impacted by heat and floods pretty often, especially this year,\u201d Smith says. \u201cMother Nature\u2019s been throwing a lot at us.\u201d<\/p>\n
To help his neighbors and loved ones navigate these hazards, Smith became a Resiliency Youth Ambassador, joining a group of fellow high school students trained in disaster preparedness. The ambassadors serve as on-the-ground advocates, sharing vital safety information and emergency resources.<\/p>\n
This outreach effort is part of a broader collaboration: Verizon Community Disaster Resilience supporting United Way\u2019s United We Prepare initiative. Together, they have brought hands-on activities to 18 U.S. locations, including New York City, to ready communities for extreme weather events and other natural hazards. These efforts reflect the broader mission of Verizon\u2019s Community Disaster Resilience program, which partners with like-minded organizations to help communities prepare for, respond to and recover from crises with greater confidence.<\/p>\n
As part of this work, Verizon supports United Way of New York City in conducting disaster preparedness education, hands-on workshops, kit packing and emergency-kit distribution events across all five boroughs, including a street fair at the school the student ambassadors attend.<\/p>\n
These efforts are tailored to meet the risks of each neighborhood:<\/p>\n
In waterfront communities such as Red Hook and Far Rockaway, distribution events focus on flash flood kits stocked with a flashlight, waterproof document bags, boot coverings and a phone charger.\u00a0In areas especially prone to high heat, like the Bronx, kits provide items such as cooling towels, a portable fan, electrolytes and a first-aid kit.<\/p>\n
Empowering local youth like Smith to distribute these resources is intentional. \u201cUsing our community members to talk to their own community is where the real magic happens,\u201d says Alessandra Angarita, senior director of volunteerism at United Way of New York City. \u201cThey are trusted messengers.\u201d<\/p>\n
To date, United Way of New York City has distributed several thousand preparedness bags, guided families in building personal emergency plans and, thanks to the efforts of the Resiliency Youth Ambassadors, helped nearly 1,000 New Yorkers sign up for the city\u2019s emergency alert system. Beyond on-the-ground outreach, the partnership also funds innovative educational tools. For example, United Way of New York City is creating a children\u2019s emergency readiness book and also adapting it into a video.<\/p>\n
For Verizon and United Way, the objective is moving beyond simply responding to extreme weather events and, instead, actively building long-term readiness before the next natural disaster hits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese events help families and communities come together to support one another in times of need, especially during natural disasters and extreme weather conditions,\u201d says April Horton, regional director for external and state government affairs at Verizon. \u201cWe\u2019re staying connected, which is at the core of who Verizon is.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Angarita, the success of that ongoing work ultimately comes down to peace of mind. \u201cI would love to see every New Yorker feel confident and be armed with information,\u201d she says. \u201cTo say, \u2018I know what to do, and I know how to be prepared.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sha-King Smith has lived in New York City his entire life. But recently, the 19-year-old Brooklyn resident has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64,139101,139100,139099],"class_list":["post-378694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-nyc-resiliency-youth-ambassadors-flood-heat","tag-united-way-of-new-york-city-preparedness","tag-verizon-community-disaster-resilience-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}