One of our priorities is to protect the lives and livelihood of our citizenry. Part of our mission is to educate, train, organize and utilize citizenry in times of disaster and throughout the year and to create, sustain and enhance Citizen Corps programs and councils throughout the State. Tennessee Citizen Corps is a grassroots initiative encouraging citizenry to get involved in homeland security and emergency preparedness efforts within their local area. Five programs exist under the Citizen Corps Umbrella:

	Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Training This is an approximately 20-hour, basic response training course offered free to Tennesseans in those counties participating. This course teaches basic emergency response measures to include fire prevention and suppression, head to toe medical assessments, and light search and rescue. This program is usually managed by the local emergency management. https://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/
	Neighborhood Watch (NW) Neighborhood Watch, a 35 year old program most of us are familiar with, is a proven deterrent against crime. We have recently enhanced the program to also detect and deter terrorist activity by including counter terrorism measures or as we have coined -- Be On the LookOut -- measures. 94 of 95 counties within the State – not to exclude cities - have a program. http://www.usaonwatch.org/
	Volunteers in Police Service (VIPS) The Volunteers in Police Service Program incorporates the use of citizen volunteers in local law enforcement agencies. Citizens are trained by each relevant department to perform specific duties. Duties may include patrol of shopping centers, checking vacant homes, traffic/ crowd control, data entry. http://www.policevolunteers.org/
	Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) This program is established in each of the State’s four major metropolitan areas. The Medical Reserve Corps is designed as a volunteer pool of active and retired health care professionals (physicians, pharmacists, veterinarians, and others) ready to support and augment during large-scale local emergencies. The Medical Reserve Corps program also works to promote community public. http://www.medicalreservecorps.gov/
	Fire Corps (FC) The most recent of the Citizen Corps programs, Fire Corps, uses citizen volunteers to enhance the capacity of resource-constrained fire and rescue departments at all levels -- volunteer, combination, and career. Volunteers are utilized in non-response. http://www.firecorps.org/