Growing Community Fire Prevention Programs - AFM’s first annual Fire Prevention Competition!

January 1, 2023

by: Nancy L. Moore, Executive Director

When my husband, Dave, and I arrived in Nairobi, Kenya in 2012 we immediately began to see the dangers of fires that are a reality of life in Africa. When we learned in 2014 that many firefighters in Zambia didn’t know the basics of fire prevention and fire safety we knew we had to do something.

From our partners at Missions of Hope International and CMF International we learned about Community Health Evangelism or Community Health Education and realized that there was very little education for developing communities on fire prevention and fire safety. So we worked together with firefighters in Africa, community members in Kenya and AFM’s American firefighter volunteers to develop a curriculum that would be culturally appropriate for developing communities.

We have trained thousands of firefighters and community volunteers in using our curriculum and have been able to track results as fire services in Africa report that communities that have received training call the fire brigade sooner in cases of fire outbreaks and that they have a better understanding of how the fire service works and what firefighters need from the community in order to do their job. In 2022, firefighters and community volunteers reported more than 520,000 people were educated in fire prevention and fire safety through training activities, community walks and fire prevention week activities. Through public television and radio more than 13 million people were received life saving fire safety education.

With more than 1 billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa - there are many more people to reach with these important life safety lessons.

In 2023 AFM has launched an initiative to reach more people by encouraging training and reporting that training through our first annual Fire Prevention Competition. We will have 4 categories for participation:

• Individual Volunteer - someone who is not paid for trainings that they are providing.

• Individual Paid - someone doing this as a part of their job, in the fire service, private or public sector.

• Fire Brigade (paid firefighters this could be a recognition for the whole fire department what they submit across all shifts, etc).

• Groups- organization or informal group (this could be firefighters or community members that are not getting paid to do the trainings and are doing it on their own time)

Trainings reported and taking place from November 20, 2022- November 1, 2023 will be considered. For the competition, trainings must take place in Africa. Participants in the competition may use the Africa Fire Mission curriculum as a guide for what training content to include: https://www.africafiremission.org/fire-safety-curriculum

The requirements to be considered include:

1. Submit training documentation to Africa Fire Mission via this form: https://www.africafiremission.org/fire-safety-training-reporting

2. Submit pictures of the training to info@africafiremission.org

Submission reviews to determine winners of the competition:

• Africa Fire Mission will review the all of the submitted training reports for quality of training as well as number of persons trained.

• Training photos will also be reviewed and AFM should be able to tell what content is being taught through the photos evidence.

• Trainings may be done formally (for instance a classroom setting or community gathering) or informally community walk, media interviews)

Winners will be announced at the closing of the Kenya Fire EMS Symposium and Competition 2023, in Nairobi, Kenya, November 2023. Winners will also receive recognition on AFM social media and AFM’s monthly newsletter. A certificate will be issued to the winners as well as a gift (yet to be determined).

Please note: Individuals training together are considered a group, please have one person from the group submit the reports and list the name of the group with the training report. Duplicate trainings will be combined as one training report. If there are participants from multiple countries, awards may be issued by country. AFM staff will not be considered as part of the competition. AFM holds the full decision making over the winners of the competition.