Welcome to the Christian Health Service Corps Security Awareness Training
Security Awareness- is defined as an awareness of environmental, and human factors that can be a threat to our personal well being and the well-being of our family.
The Security Awareness training will encompass four weeks and two biweekly meetings. There nine chapters in the Security Awareness Manual we will be using. Please read the assigned chapters each week before attending the online weekly session and be prepared to discuss during our time together.
The security training is to make you aware of the need to track and monitor the security situation where you will be serving. Keep in mind that some of the material you will review here is for Aid workers serving conflict areas. Aid workers typically serve in higher risk areas than you will be serving but in many regions security situations can deteriorate quickly leaving you and your family in difficult situations. However, missionaries, development workers and aid workers face many of the same challenges. Direct targeting of all of these groups is up significantly in recent years and is likely going to continue to increase. It is also important to remember that security situations can deteriorate quickly and beyond anyone’s expectations. Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and many more all had Christian Missionaries serving there when they erupted into civil war. The list is not isolated to Africa, there were missionaries in Cambodia, Vietnam, Iran, Nicaragua and Croatia when war erupted.
Monitoring security situations for every country CHSC has missionaries is not possible. CHSC leaves security assessments and evaluations to where they can best be done, by your receiving facility or program. We defer to the judgment of your receiving facility as to the need to heighten levels of security and recommend if and when evacuation is needed. There are never guarantees against violent crime but there are common sense steps one can take to minimize opportunity for criminals, and maximize your chance of survival in such events. That is what these training modules are about. The videos and information in this program are not meant to scare but they are meant to help prepare for every eventuality and enhance you chance of survival in such events.
CHSC has chosen to use the World Vision Security Awareness Manual WV-Security-Manual-amended.pdf as the text outline for this course. Of course CHSC is not World Vision nor can we provide the advanced security assessments, evaluations, budget and planning of a large AID organization. We do however expect you to know the security environment in which you will be serving and all relevant state department travel advisories and warnings. Some of the manual refers to WV specific procedural information you can obviously disregard that information, but review carefully each section that does apply to general security information.
You can begin by clicking on week one below, please excuse that these are out of order, this was a formatting error I could not correct. Start with week one then two etc. You may review weeks 2 to 4 but keep in mind content and discussions may still be added.
