Welcome to the Public Affairs Officer / Unit Public Affairs Representative (PAO / UPAR) Conference Training
The State Defense Force Unit Public Affairs Representative (SDF UPARS) training will be conducted at the November 2022 SGAUS Annual Conference. The training curriculum will be led by PAOs MAJ (IN) Terry Heifetz, CPT (NY) Mark Getman, and CPT (GA) Beverly Shepard.
The SDF UPARs training prepares unit PAOs to tell the SDF story: the who, what, when, where, and why of the SDF mission. The need for PAOs in the 21st century is increasingly important due to the manner in which news and information is distributed through the internet. Many Americans do not know that SDFs exist, let alone what their mission is, and the task of the PAO is to get the word out to this external constituency. In addition, information about the SDF mission, SDF training, and SDF successes needs to be distributed quickly and accurately to SDF forces so that morale remains high and mission success is more likely to be achieved. Finally, PAO personnel are critical to making sure that SDF forces are appropriately informed of their commander’s intent so that mission success and training occurs according to design.
The contemporary PAO is also trained in the National Incident Management System (NIMS) role of Public Information Officer (PIO). This on-site role in the Incident Command System (ICS) is the “action” role of the PAO in the disaster relief environment. In order to successfully fulfill this role the contemporary PAO will be NIMS qualified in all PIO duties, and will hold appropriate NIMS certifications for these duties in the ICS.
Training will include preparation prior to the conference with Read Ahead materials available at the link below. The focus of the 2022 training will be basic news writing, photography, and photo captioning. The goal is publication of a completed article for publication in the SDF Times.
Point of Contact (POC) for the training is MAJ (TN) Steve Estes (Steven.estes@sgaus.org). Requirements for attendance are conference registration – follow the guidance for the Conference for more details on this website.
Click here to access the other PAO Instructional and Reference Materials
All inquiries should be directed to:
MAJ (TN) Steven Estes| Conference Coordinator | Steven.estes@sgaus.org
