This course merges two courses, the Be Prepared: Know What to Say and How to Say It   course on day 1, and one-on-one sessions on day 2 to fine-tune skills.   

Be Prepared: Know What to Say and How to Say It is a full-day spokesperson course for USEPA RPMs, CICs, PIOs, OSCs and other staffers. What you say and how you say it is critical to getting the right information out to your many stakeholders. This intensive course is designed to give EPA staff the confidence they need to explain their work and to talk about tough issues with a wide range of audiences, including affected community members and government officials, the general public, the news media and others.

Participants will learn how to:

• Prepare for public meetings, stakeholder engagement, and news media encounters;
• Effectively develop and then deliver key messages to a wide range of audiences;
• Communicate with confidence, even during an emergency;
• Handle difficult questions and situations and manage conflict.

This highly interactive course features customized individual scenarios relevant to each participant's programs or projects; one-on-one videotaped sessions with professional interviewers; a group training exercise; and critiques of effective and ineffective videotaped public meeting and interview encounters.

The course is limited to 12 U.S. EPA Superfund OSC participants who must commit to attending the workshop. Participants will be contacted by email prior to the course and asked about their spokesperson experience, current or relevant projects or issues, public meeting experience, and any encounters they have had with the news media. Priority is given to EPA Superfund OSCs.

A customized USEPA "Be Prepared: Know What to Say and How to Say It" Training Manual will be provided during the workshop.