Wynand Engelbrecht contacted me and began telling me about a fantastic initiative that will benefit people in emergency situations. People are becoming proactive, action is being taken and great initiatives are being born. Wynand talks to me about his new project and what it can do for people:
You are starting a safety initiative, 10 x Aim Heroes, tell me about it?
Nic, 10 x AIM Heroes is a program where a participating member registers a personal support group of ten friends, who may be informed of a situation in the event of the member experiencing an emergency.
We find often times that a person needs to communicate with not only several call centres, but also with loved ones and friends, during or shortly after an emergency.
This program provides an enormous ‘shortcut’ for these needs.
You are working with Aim on this, www.aim911.co.za, what do they do for you?
AIM is the umbrella initiative; there are two more products which are also ready for the market, and which will be showcased in a pilot project we start on for Alexandra and Jukskei River safety, next week.
AIM is an acronym for Address Incident Management system.
The AIM website should be live in about ten days.
How would this service aid people?
Nic, there is a beehive of activity out there what with individuals as well as corporate institutions pushing for crime reduction and prevention programs.
I felt that the service we could deliver was to improve on emergency communication, and the products and services developed so far, cuts on call time from sometimes as much as 7 minutes per emergency call to a single call centre, down to 90 seconds, to several call centres.
With the crime situation what it is and in addition to that, 2010 coming up, the pressure on call centres simply will double; therefore anything that can be done to improve on this, should ultimately bring relief on dispatching of vehicles and crews to incidents as well. So the people will benefit immensely by this.
What brought on the idea?
I am a former commander of the Sandton Fire Department Operations and as such I have a lively interest in emergency services service delivery.
The first product developed was the UPN (Unique Position Numbering program) about which I would like to tell you also. I realised some seven years ago service delivery was going south and decided to do something about the problem. I have committed my very life and all my meagre resources to bring this about, but I am really glad that I could see it through.
Is this a positive idea stemming from negativity or an idea reinforcing negativity?
I would like to believe it is the former; a kind of knee-jerk reaction. The country is in a serious grip of negative happenings and the program seeks to bring a percentage point of relief.
How has the response been so far?
We did a soft launch of 10 x Heroes this past Tuesday (two days ago) and the reaction has been tremendous to say the least.
When is this service open to the public?
We started registering new members yesterday already, as the demand seems to be so phenomenal.
How do people register?
Send the word REGISTER to 32994 and follow the instructions.
Question 3 asks who referred the new prospect and the PIN to be put in there is: B0001
Registration fee is as follows:
1. R91 per person per year, payable with registration.
2. The cell phone used for registration is debited with this amount immediately.
3. Next year, on birth date of registration, the member will be prompted for renewal.
This is an incredible initiative and one that I support fully. If you think that this service could help you (and I am sure that it could) please support the initiative and register today. For 25c per day I am sure that everyone can afford to pay for the peace of mind!
Keep a lookout for more posts regarding this great project. I will post about them when they happen!
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