Lisa Orloff

Original Air Date: July 7, 2024

After volunteering herself after 9/11, Lisa Orloff formed the group World Cares Center to make sure volunteers are trained to respond to catastrophic events with their own health safeguarded.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio,conversations about issues that matter. Here's your
host, three time Grasie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein. I want to introduce
you to a woman who has actuallybeen on Sunstein Sunday several times, but
she's doing so much more these daysthat than when I first met Lisa Orloff,

(00:22):
who is the founder, the creatorof World Care Center. And it
actually came from nine to eleven whenthere were so many volunteers just everywhere who
wanted to come and help it groundzero and nobody had training to necessarily be

(00:44):
a volunteer, and so she tookit upon herself to create this organization.
Thats volunteers how to respond to anemergency and also protect themselves. So that
said, I want to catch upwith you, Lisa about some of the
new things that World Care Center isdoing, because I know you're doing things

(01:10):
with Ukraine. I know you're doingthings with suicide prevention, which has become
I mean, I think it hasalways been an issue for first responders,
it seems to be getting worse.It's very scary. Thanks Shelly. Yeah,
so it's been a twenty two yearjourney thus far, and we've come

(01:32):
a long way, and our wholemission is really to train and support what
we call ready responders, and theyare average citizens who step out of their
homes to help when a crisis occurswithin their community. They could be professional
responders that are highly trained and helpingout in a different area and really protecting

(01:57):
frontline workers who are often on thecall. They are the ones to respond.
We first came about during nine toeleven with such an influx of goodwill
people who wanted to help, andthey weren't necessarily affiliated with an agency.
You know, there were a coupleof big, long standing agencies that were

(02:19):
considered to be the disaster volunteer organizations, and people were being instructed to go
to them, but they were beinginstructed to leave the site where they wanted
to help, or leave their neighborhoodsgo get trained and potentially be placed to
help, whereas they were seeing aroundthem an urgent need and they could plug
right in there. The disconnect wasthat they weren't officially trained and our emergency

(02:47):
managers were overwhelmed with this influx ofgoodwill. Twenty two years later, FEMA
is now using the term whole ofcommunity and there's a lot of discussion about
if you survive a disaster that hashappened in your community, then they're encouraging
you to do something, to getout and to help. And Worldcare Center

(03:13):
pairs that call to action with thetraining and protection needed to keep those volunteers
ready and safe. So we havea new initiative that we've launched over the
last two years called the Collaborative DisasterVolunteer Credential. It's focused on these hyper
local grassroots groups that we know aregoing to take action but may not know

(03:39):
where to get the training that theyneed to stay in their community and help.
And so we've put together about fortygrassroots groups who have agreed to use
this credential as their foundational disaster volunteertraining. And not only are they getting
trained, but now we're puzzle piecingthem together so that when crisis occurs,

(04:01):
they can share resources, they cansupport each other, they can help each
other, all along the same platform, knowing everybody is trained in the same
way. And this is really borrowedfrom the Incident Command system right where our
official responders use this kind of platform. We do too. Part of that

(04:21):
initiative stemming from nine to eleven andthe emotional toll that that work had on
everyone. Is our effort to keepour responders emotionally healthy. Twenty two years
ago, you couldn't talk about that. You know, you were a spondors,

(04:42):
so you were strong and stoic,stoic, and you didn't talk about
the emotional toil and the emotional painof what we do. And thankfully now
it's getting more okay to talk aboutit, to seek help and to get

(05:04):
training to know what the signs andsymptoms of post traumatic stress or any kind
of trauma, what they are,and what to do about it, as
well as how to avoid that altogether, how to take care of yourself.
And we're very fortunate to be havingthe support to launch an emotional resiliency and

(05:28):
suicide prevention training program focusing on thoseat risk, frontline workers and frontline volunteers.
And having worked and volunteer during nineto eleven and subsequent disasters, we
know one of those audiences are theconstruction industry. One of the highest rates

(05:53):
of suicide is in the construction industry. I don't think most people know that.
I didn't know that, yes,so CDC. Why is that it
can be transient work, so they'renot coming to the same office every day
with the same people and working inthe same environment and having the same network.

(06:14):
Work can be unsteady from job tojob and being placed. When there
is a construction project, it's hardphysical labor. So there's the aspect of
when a construction worker gets injured andhas to return to work as quickly as

(06:36):
they can, back to physical work, and there's a thread of opioid addiction
that goes to that, and youknow, we're looking at removing placing the
blame for being becoming used to takingthis prescription medication that allows them to get

(06:59):
back to work and become physical againafter being injured. You know, I've
taught opioid awareness for a long timeand I most recently broke my leg in
December. As you well know,I'm a volunteer firefighter on Long Island and

(07:19):
I broke my leg during a drilland I was prescribed opioids to help with
the excruciating pain. And when Iwas on them, I felt no pain.
I felt like I could just goback and do what I was doing
before the injury, which was ridiculousreally, but it became so blatantly obvious

(07:43):
how someone could want to continue totake this drug that's helping them get back
to normal and not feel pain.But then when that prescription ends, you
become desperate, and this is howthe addiction begins. And you know,

(08:05):
maybe in the past it was blamingthe person who became addicted, who really
didn't know before a whole awareness campaignthat opioids could be that addictive. And
even if you hear it, onceyou feel it, you know you're more
aware. So this combination of allof these stressors and tentions of the construction

(08:31):
industry and that physical work and reallyany physical kind of work or work where
you're going from place to place.Each industry has its stressors, but the
construction industry has a lot of them. So what are you doing exactly?
What is Worldcare Center doing. Weprovide free training to groups and individuals on

(08:54):
again the Collaborative Disaster Volunteer Credential,which trains them on the skills to be
a disaster volunteer and be on thefrontline during crisis. We have a whole
initiative on emotional resiliency and suicide preventionand it consists of four trainings, two
segments to trainings for workers. Oneis awareness and the second is how to

(09:18):
help others, how to identify whenmaybe your partner or your work buddy is
in crisis and what you can doand where you can access resources. And
then the second track is for managersmanaging their own Managers stress first, and
then the second training is how theycan develop an emotional resiliency program within their

(09:39):
teams or within their businesses. Soif they're in a small business, they
may not have an HR division,they may not have an EAP program and
employee assistance program, so this maybe it for them. How do they
develop that. If they're in alarger organization, maybe they're leading a team

(10:01):
and they, as in that intimatesetting, want to do more for their
team and they can bring resiliency,the resiliency thread into what they do every
day. And then of course whencrisis occurs. As you well know,
we have provided hundreds of thousands ofpersonal protective items to frontline workers, and

(10:24):
during COVID were we delivered n ninetyfive respirators to every firehouse on Staten Island
and all of those that requested PPEthroughout the Burrows and beyond. How do
people contact you. They can goto our website www dot Worldcares dot org

(10:48):
and click the contact us form,or they can give us a call at
two and two five six three sevenfive seven zero. Tell us now about
your work with Ukraine and refugees ingeneral, because this is new as well
since the last time we speak.It is new. It's not new,

(11:09):
but it's new. That sounds silly. During nine to eleven, one of
the services that we provided was aservice for rescue workers and their children,
disaster volunteers and their children and survivorsand it was called band Aid for Healing
and it was a journal for childrento express their grief and a guide for

(11:31):
parents to understand what was going onwith their children regressive behavior that really was
representing the grief that they couldn't express. And every disaster that has occurred,
whatever language it needed to be,and we've redeveloped this workbook with the very
dedicated volunteers, professionals, psychiatrists,psychologists, art therapists. We've redeveloped it

(11:58):
for what's going on in that crisisand the language needed and the most recent
crisis that we have done this programwith this in Ukraine, so we deployed
to Leviv where there were internal sheltersthat we went to. We went with
our medical team. They delivered medicationand aid, and also we're training disaster

(12:24):
volunteers on CPR and first aid,and we also initiated this resiliency program.
And we went to these shelters andwe worked with families and went through this
journal with the children. It wasdeveloped for multiple ages, so you can
draw, you can write. Theparents were reading the guides and were very

(12:48):
informed on what was going on withthis children with their children. As you
can imagine, some of them arecoming home from being at war being a
soldier, and they're coming home andtheir children are regressive and acting out,
and their perspective might be, well, why is this happening? Now,
I can't handle this additional stressor.But then they realize that this stressor is

(13:09):
actually a dynamic of the children reactingto the war and the crisis and the
stress of the parents and the notknowing if mom or dad are going to
come home. So we delivered thatin Leviv. We have a relationship,
our team goes back and forth,and now we're delivering it here in New

(13:31):
York City for the refugees that arecoming here, and so we're extremely thankful
that we've just moved into a largerspace where we are developing a physical training
center where we can offer this programonce a month free of charge. It
would seem with all you're doing,you must need more volunteers, more volunteers,

(13:56):
more donors, Yes, for sure, more resources all together. Are
there specific types of expertise that you'relooking for from volunteers for the emotional resiliency
program? Anybody that is in themental health field, whether they're a social
worker, a teacher, teachers arewonderful. Those types of professionals would be

(14:22):
wonderful to plug into the program.When we're talking about getting our community trained
and trained up together, we're reallylooking for anybody that's affiliated with a religious
institution, whether it be a mosque, a synagogue, a church, a
boys and girls club, a bookclub. Anybody that thinks that the group

(14:45):
that they're affiliated with is going todo something when something that happens in their
community. We want them to reachout and be the liaison to that local
leader so we can get them alltrained up and everybody on the same page
and connected. We have less thana minute left what if we not said
that. You must say to ourlisteners, everybody can be a ready responder,

(15:07):
and I have seen it. Thereis good and everybody, you're gonna
something bad happens in in front ofyou, You're gonna do something. Get
trained to provide the best care,get trained to stay safe, and join
this movement worldcars dot org. Andthank you so much, Lisa Orloff.
I'll have to have you on,you know, every so often to just

(15:30):
update the great work that you do. You've been listening to Sunstein sessions on
iHeartRadio, a production of New York'sclassic rock Q one oh four point three