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ANG Ready Airman website and mobile app; powerful resiliency, risk and safety resources

  • Published
  • By ANG Safety Office
  • ANG Safety
JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md --  Personalized emergency assistance is now available to Air National Guard members and their families at the touch of a button through the ReadyAirman.org mobile app. 

The app is available for most smart phone platforms, and its "Fearless Five" function allows Airmen or family members to summon help quickly should they find themselves in an emergency situation.

"Fearless Five allows any Airman or family member to program in the five people closest to them, who can help them in a crisis situation," said Col. Edward Vaughan, the ANG Director of Safety and Executive Director of the ANG Community Action Information Board.

"In an emergency, one click sends an urgent message, like an Amber Alert, to all of those five people at the same time," he added. "Not only are they notified you're in trouble, they can get GPS directions to navigate to where you are and help you."

The new Ready Airman.org website and app also puts users in touch with specific resources or care providers in their area who are familiar with issues Airmen and families face, according to Mr. David Schoenberg, ANG Suicide Prevention Program Manager.

"Whether it's a chaplain, Director of Psychological Health, Master Resilience Trainer, Airman and Family Readiness Program Manager, or other resource," Schoenberg said, "Airmen and families can locate the person nearest to them, or in their geographical region, with a tap on their mobile app."

The ReadyAirman.org site and app also contain information for Department of Defense and Air Force resources to access assistance no matter where Guard Airmen and families happen to be.  Vaughan said this is particularly important because ANG Airmen and their families are often live long distances from their bases.

"We now have the ability to reach Airmen wherever they are with messages from ANG leadership and the CAIB," said Vaughan. "In those messages we talk about taking care of each other, the Wingman concept, Ask Care Escort (suicide prevention), and we can make those resources available when they need it."

Vaughan noted the ReadyAirman.org site and app consolidates information from three successful legacy websites, Wingmanproject.org, Ready54.org and Wingmanday.org.
"ReadyAirman.org is now the ANG content hub for readiness, risk and resilience information, and it's also the home of the ANG's suicide prevention outreach and Wingman Day planning efforts," said Lt. Col. Roberto Balzano, ANG Risk Management Program Manager."

We worked closely with our stakeholders and customers to bring those programs into one-stop shopping for our Airmen and families, preserving those functions that proved useful and adding new functionality that results in better human-to-human interaction."

Ready Airman.org also hosts more than 3,000 independent pieces of content, including short-format mobile videos produced for Airmen on a large number of topics which are two to three minutes and designed for leaders to easily put into a briefing, commander's call or Wingman Day program. Units hosting a Wingman Day can also take advantage of the multiple pre-built agendas, or use the site to customize their own program.

"The ultimate goal is resilient Airmen ready to execute our missions in a downrange war fight, a home front domestic response, or build security cooperation through partnerships around the globe," said Vaughan.  "To do that we need to engage commanders, Airmen, and their families, too.

The ANG began delivering on-line resilience content to Airmen and their families in 2007 with the Wingman Project, which was later identified as an Air Force best practice.  Vaughan pointed out the ANG's track record of delivering high-quality on-line content dates back even farther than that.

"Starting in 2005 with SeeAndAvoid.org, joint midair collision avoidance, ANG has more than a decade of experience innovating, developing, and fielding useful web and mobile platforms for Airmen, families and communities," Vaughan said, "many of them going on to recognition as Air Force or even joint service best practices."

The ANG CAIB updated the ReadyAirman.org site and mobile app in partnership with the Safety, Personnel and Manpower, Chaplains, and Surgeon General Directorates.  Initially debuted at the ANG Executive Safety Summit earlier this year, ReadyAirman.org is already receiving positive reviews from users and has topped 25,000 likes on social media, according to Vaughan.