Family – City Insight Magazine

Essential Preplanning for People and Families

Tanushree Kanungo — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 17:08:44 +0000

In today’s fast-paced world, planning is essential to achieving goals and handling unexpected challenges. Life can bring unforeseen problems, such as financial crises, natural disasters, or health issues, which often arrive unannounced. That’s why pre-planning is crucial—it enhances preparedness, minimizes chaos, and fosters a sense of security. Let’s explore the importance of pre-planning and the strategies individuals and families can adopt to strengthen their responsiveness.

Pre-planning involves identifying potential risks and developing strategies to address them in advance. It ensures that basic needs are met during emergencies, preventing panic and disorder. Additionally, pre-planning strengthens community bonds, encouraging neighbors and local groups to work together to find solutions collectively.

A well-structured emergency plan can make a significant difference in critical situations. Families, especially children, should be familiar with evacuation routes, emergency contacts, and helpline numbers. Most buildings have designated safe exits and alternative escape routes for disasters like fires, floods, or earthquakes—every family member should be aware of these routes to ensure a swift and safe evacuation.

Every household should maintain a list of emergency numbers, including local authorities, hospitals, and trusted friends or family members. This list should be kept in a common area where it is easily accessible to everyone.

A carefully prepared emergency kit can help families sustain themselves without outside assistance for several days. Essential items include:

Food and Water: A three-day supply of non-perishable food and at least one gallon of water per person per day.

Medical Supplies: A first-aid kit, essential medications, and prescription drugs. Families with infants should stock baby formula and necessary supplies.

Power & Light Sources: Flashlights, extra batteries, chargers, candles, and power banks to maintain communication during outages.

Having a financial safety plan can prevent stress and hardship during crises. Save copies of birth certificates, passports, insurance policies, wills, and medical records in a fireproof and waterproof safe.

Strong communities thrive on mutual support. Establishing a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) can assist senior citizens and vulnerable members during disasters. Learning essential skills such as CPR and first aid can make a meaningful difference in emergencies.

Emergency preparedness is a shared responsibility that enhances safety and security. By developing an emergency plan, stocking essential supplies, securing financial stability, and fostering community collaboration, families can navigate crises effectively.

Family Friendly Summer Activities

Tyshae Gipson — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 13:30:00 +0000

Summer brings more time with family and activities to enjoy. Here we list some family friendly activities to share with the people you love this season.

Beach/Water Day – A day in the sun helps keep the spirits up and lets you cool down on those hot summer days with some water. You can set up a nice pool or a slip-and-slide right in your backyard and tie in some good old-fashioned water balloons.

Park visits – A nice time in nature can help boost anyone’s mood and allow a family to take the time and enjoy the simple things of life together.

Family walks – Taking a daily walk with your family is a great form of exercise and brings you all together at the end of an activity-filled day.

Camping – Spending time under the stars helps bring people together with plenty of activities and things to do to help bring us back to our roots in nature.

State Fair/ Amusement Park – A state fair or amusement park has activities for everyone young and old and local parks have a nice and hidden charm, that your family can discover.

Local Entertainment – Search around your community and find new events and places that offer family and local fun at a nice budget. It always pays to support your local community and see what the world has to offer your family.

Outdoor movies – Outdoor movies is a simple activity to let the kids be entertained and the parents have some time to relax as they enjoy the atmosphere.

Neighborhood block parties – Bring your neighborhood together by planning a block party to bring the community together, while getting to know your local families and friends.

Family Garden – Teach your kids the value of nature and how rewarding it is to grow something from the ground up and reward their hard work with a good harvest.

These are just a few family friendly activities to help bring your family closer during the season. Many families are different, but spending time together is always a universal love language for those you are close to.

What’s the Problem with Social Distancing? It’s Already Our Way of Life

Romaine Wright — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 14:35:50 +0000

Over the past two weeks we’ve been encouraged to practice social distancing, a conscious effort to maintain space between yourself and other people.

We’ve been urged not to gather in groups greater than 500, then 250, then 50, then 25 and now 10 and to stay at least six feet away from one another. Despite this charge being for our own health, there has been some very public rebellion to the idea.

We’ve seen live posts to social media of people out and about socializing, the beaches in Florida are still packed with people soaking up the sun and splashing in the waves, and cities are laced with lines of people wrapping around corners outside of bars, restaurants and stores. Local governments have had to limit restaurants to serving take-out only and, in some areas, many stores have closed indefinitely as drastic measures to keep people apart.

It’s said that social distancing is a challenge because people have an innate need to connect with others and that limiting that contact may negatively impact our psychological well-being. But, I’d argue that we started practicing social distancing long before the coronavirus (COVID-19) became a pandemic. We’ve been socially distancing for decades.

Take a moment to think about the interactions you have in a typical day. Be sure to include every mode of communication that you use and every connection you make with another person. Now ask yourself, what percentage of those interactions are in person? How many are with a live person? How many are virtual or electronic? How many require an actual person-to-person connection?

Chances are the majority of your social interactions on a typical day are socially distant. If you’re like most people, emails, text messages and IMs far outweigh physical connections and, if you add in communication through social media and television, you were more distant from social interaction two months ago than you are today.

The only difference between then and now is then it was by choice, today we’re being told to distance ourselves and, here in America, we don’t like it. In America, we are used to having an opinion and freedom of choice and the feeling of losing that freedom can be a great challenge. However, as mentioned earlier, social distancing is not a new concept, it’s really already our way of life.

Yesterday I read an article about a popular streaming service offering a way to connect with other subscribers, so you can stream together simultaneously as if you are watching the movie or show together. This service is offered through an app which includes a chat feature, so you can live chat with whoever you’re watching with from afar.

As an adult that lives alone, my first thought was “what a great idea”; when I remembered that most adults do not live alone that thought quickly changed to “are we really this far gone?” Is it really necessary to connect with people in a different place when there’s likely people in the house with you? Schools nationwide are closed and many of us are working from home or are just home because our jobs are closed. For most people this means there is someone at home with you that can watch along with you but, unfortunately, our chronic social distancing has overshadowed that fact.

We’ve become accustomed to interacting with people we can’t see and those interactions supersede the relationships in front of us. It’s a sad reality yet our reality none the less and the recent charge for social distancing had made this glaringly clear.

Think about how often you see people together and one of them (or all of them) is looking down at their phone “connecting” with others while ignoring those right in front of them. Consider the times you’ve had virtual conversations with someone only to struggle for things to say when you see them face-to-face (I know it can’t just be me).

Look up from this article and look around you, is there someone else there in the room who is more interested in what they see as they scroll than the conversation they could have with you right now? Chances are there is someone in the room and my hope is that you put down whatever device you are using to read this and engage with them.

Take this time of social distance from the outside world to socially reconnect with the people right in front of you. Your children, your spouse, your loved ones; the people that you work hard to support yet who often get the least of your time, energy and attention because you have so little left to give after a long day of work. This is our time to bond with the people who matter most, to reignite flames of interest that have been dampened by the daily trials of life, to reestablish the passion we once had and to regain control of the lives that we live every day.

Right now we should be having the conversations we’ve been putting off, we should ask the questions that have been burning in our minds, we should share the joys we never have time to share because outside life demands that we make it a priority. Don’t let this time pass by without taking advantage of it. Besides, it’ll go much faster if we make the most of it. Happy connecting!