The intent of Firewise is to be very community and resident driven. The educational and investment requirements are intended to be incorporating the entire community. Some of the organizational stuff and coming up with a plan for your site can be done by just a few people, but the educational outreach is meant to be aimed at the community as a whole and is a requirement for approval. Also, having an idea of your neighborhood interest is going to help you determine some of the things you may need to focus on. For example, less interest means you may have to put more energy into gaining interest and be very intentional with your educational outreach. If you have a community with less interest, it may be a good idea to start with a smaller boundary, see if you can have success and then grow it. One of the main goals of the program is to encourage residents to take individual responsibility for their home and property and to get them to take the actions that are going to reduce their risk. It would be hard to accomplish this without engaging neighbors in this process. Even if you have resistance from some neighbors you can still push forward with your Firewise USA without every community member’s approval.