1,745 Disaster Preparedness Kits and Counting

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This article was originally published in the September 2019 issue of Toyota Financial Services’ (TFS) pulse internal e-newsletter. It spread awareness for National Preparedness Month, and highlighted related team member activities in the community as well as company resources.

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As Hurricane Dorian threatened the southeast U.S. coast at the beginning of this month, TFS team members across the nation came together in an incredibly impactful way for the community. Kicked off at HQ on September 4, TFS Team Member Service Day unites team members at all locations to take disaster preparedness seriously.

To date, over 945 team members have built 1,745 disaster preparedness kits for American Red Cross. And we’re not done yet. More field locations have activities planned in the month of September, National Preparedness Month.

These kits are already serving an immediate need. As we’ve seen with Hurricane Dorian and other recent natural disasters, unpredictable weather may strike at any time.

Recognizing September as National Preparedness Month, Toyota’s Disaster Resilience partner SBP shares a few tips: check the details of your home insurance and take a quick video to document personal belongings at home. It’s super easy and very worthwhile.

For these and more tips from SBP, be sure to listen to this TFS Talks podcast where we sit down with SBP’s Chief Development Officer, Elizabeth Eglé. We also chat with TFS Scrum Master Eddie Blandon about the horrific loss of his family’s home when it was struck by lightning this past June. Our colleagues in HR share a specific way you can support the team member funded Toyota Emergency Relief Program,(TERP) so that we can all look out for each other to help recover from an unexpected, catastrophic event.

Thank you for extending support to our external communities and for taking time to learn how to help our team members, friends and family prepare for an emergency or natural disaster. Taking the time to understand disaster preparedness means we can all respond and recover from disasters with much more resiliency.

For more information on Toyota’s national disaster response and recovery partners, visit American Red Cross and SBP. You can also go to the to the new Toyota Learning Center and search for “Disaster Preparedness at Home” to view a ten minute disaster preparedness training video.