The Guyana Red Cross Society (GRCS) and its partners in the Caribbean Community Resilience to Disaster Risk (CCRDR) group met recently to review the work done since it convened and to establish a second year work plan and budget.
In a press release the Red Cross said the regional steering committee meeting included partners from the Dominican, Jamaican, Canadian Red Cross and the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies, the Red Cross DRM Resource Centre in Barbados and CIDA. It was hosted from January 12-14.
The CCRDR project endeavours to impact disaster risk reduction (DRR) programming at regional, state and community levels. At the regional level, the project will research the targeting mechanisms used by CDEMA and civil society organisations and recommend an approach that can be standardized and piloted to determine vulnerable communities. It will contribute to and advance a key regional priority: to overcome a lack of consolidated CBDRR knowledge available to both government agencies and civil society organisation through the establishment of a Caribbean Disaster Risk Management Resource Centre in Barbados.
At the state and community levels, the Red Cross National Societies in Dominica, Jamaica and Guyana will continue to collaborate with National Disaster Management Agencies and other partners in the implementation of the community activities.
Although the project had a late start, the GRCS began implementing community disaster risk reduction activities in five communities in Regions Five and Six namely at Broken-Water Land, Straatcampbell-Chance, Perth, Mara and Baracara. These communities were selected using a community selection tool which rated various indicators of vulnerability, in collaboration with the Civil Defence Commission and the Ministry of Local Government.
Implementation is at various stages in each community and activities include facilitating the Vulnerability and Capacity Assessments, training community disaster response teams, facilitating the developments of community (linked to a regional and national) and family disaster preparedness and response plans, and operating a community risk reduction micro-project. “A key characteristic of this project is the implementation of a monitoring and evaluation tool, in order to assess the level of impact of the activities on the community,” the release said. The tool has been developed in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University.
Partners at the meeting also observed a simulation exercise conducted at Mara, East Bank Berbice River. Mara recently completed the community disaster response team training and used the simulation to test the knowledge and capacity to respond within their own community Red Cross Disaster Risk Reduction Programme.
