The Nassau County Youth Emergency Team was came to light as agent Kelsey Irvine sought to incorporate preparedness skills in her local youth programming, but did not see enough PYD in the available curriculum to use solely that material. After forming the partnership with Nassau County Emergency Management, it was decided that additionally their local EOC wanted to utilize the youth to support their public outreach and animal sheltering operations. It was agreed upon to also incorporate a mentoring system to encourage graduates to stay active in the program, extend the time frame for better skill retention and relationship building, and incorporate capstones to build the youth's public communication skills. Many long planning meetings later they came to the realization that their program was quickly becoming unique from the original source material... so they decided to found a new cumulative program called the Youth Emergency Team (YET), lovingly nicknaming their youth as "YETies".  As their partnership continued, these two organizations sought more continued educations and filled "gaps" in the available curriculum to make preparedness fun, relevant, and a lifelong journey of skill building for all YETies. Now YET is fully facilitated and lead by 4-H and growing better every year! Majors have made this program irrefutably irreplaceable. 

To date YETies have accomplished so much more than the original plan of Teen CERT. Many have continued to stay active in 4-H, volunteer for EOC events, used their skills in real life situations, taught peers, continued their education, and even serve as evaluators for the adult CERT program. In fact, our official logo was designed by a YETie! Besides building life-saving skills our youth have overwhelmingly self-declared the biggest impact of this program has been the sense of belonging and purpose they've gained along the way.

YET has won several awards and has been presented all the way to the international scale including:

• Northeast Florida Regional Council's Special Achievement Award (2018) 

• State-winner for the NAE4-HYDP Beyond Youth Leadership Award (2019)

• Florida Association of Extension 4-H Agent's State Program of Excellence (2019)

• Poster Presentation at the International Association of Emergency Management Professionals Conference (2019)

• Extension Professionals Association of Florida conference abstract session (2018)

• National Association of 4-H Youth Development Professionals conference (2020 deferred, 2021)

• Community Risk Reduction "kitchen table" (2024)

• CRRNet Vision 20/20 Symposium (2025)

• Extension Professionals Association of Florida conference abstract session (2025)

We are hoping that many more counties are inspired to use what's available, incorporate their PYD specialties, and build community resilience nation-wide! This program is not recommended as a virtual opportunity.