Protocols on Escudo

Introducing the scheme

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing the scheme#

Four steps, over about a fortnight. The only one people get wrong is the last: they explain it beautifully and then let everyone go home without signing up.

Don’t go asking for permission#

There’s an instinct to start at the Guardia Civil puesto. Don’t. Neighbours agreeing to help each other isn’t a policing activity, so nobody has to authorise it — and walking in to ask makes it sound like something that needs authorising, which invites a no from someone who was never asked to decide.

Telegram onboarding

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Telegram onboarding#

Two minutes per person, sitting next to them, on their own phone. Never by instructions on paper.

This never stops#

The first sign-up meeting is the biggest batch, not the job. Onboarding is a standing task, and it belongs to the Assistants. It comes round whenever:

somebody moves in, turns 18, or finally says yes after six months of watching;
somebody gets a new phone — see below, this is the big one;
somebody comes back for the summer, or is here for a season;
somebody reinstalls Telegram, or clears out their chats.

A village that onboards once and considers it done has a member list that quietly rots.

Phone and device onboarding

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Phone and device onboarding#

How a house that isn’t on Telegram joins the Red Escudo: a phone somebody already owns, or a device the family buys. Either way it’s the same alert, into the same group, reaching the same people.

1. Choose it with the person, not about them#

No list of the vulnerable, no committee deciding who is frail. It comes out of an ordinary conversation — usually out of Telegram onboarding, when it’s honest that a phone app isn’t the answer for this person.

Response

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Response#

What you do when an alert arrives. This is the one page every member should have read.

Call 062 or 112 first#

If the situation needs the authorities, they get called before anything else, and the caller says so in the group so five people don’t ring the same operator. Escudo supplements them and never replaces them. Every alert carries both numbers for that reason.

Testing and false alarms

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Testing and false alarms#

An untested alert system is a rumour. The failure is always the same one — a phone that didn’t make a noise — and you only find it by looking.

The drill, twice a year#

Announce it. Say beforehand that there’ll be a drill this month. Don’t say which day.
The Coordinator types /test. Admins only — it’s the one command in the system that makes every phone in the village ring for no emergency. The message says what it is in its first line, so nobody gets in a car.
Count two things. How many phones made a noise. How many minutes until the first reply.
Fix the phones that stayed silent. That’s the entire job.

Those two numbers are the health of the Red Escudo. If the second one is getting worse, don’t reorganise anything — check notifications.