The Office of Disaster Management (ODM) is working on developing a Community Disaster Preparedness Training and Planning Tool Kit which will be used by Dominica and other Caribbean states.
On Monday January 07, 2012 the ODM in collaboration with Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) began a two day workshop here to develop the toolkit.
Acting National Disaster Coordinator, Don Corriette, said it will contain the tools needed to assist communities in developing effective community disaster preparedness programmes in the region.
“This workshop is timely as together we try to build community resilience. At the end of this workshop we are hoping to develop a toolkit that will guide us and give us the framework as to how to go about tailoring and establishing a model that will give us some consistency in our programmes going forward,” Corriette said.
Dominica’s office of Disaster management is receiving support in this effort from the CDEMA Coordinating Unit, through its Disaster Risk Management Sub-Regional Programme (ACP-EU) project.
Velda Joseph, Community Disaster Planning Specialist of the CDEMA Barbados office, is in Dominica providing support to the initiative. She noted that the region continues to be plagued by disasters and it’s imperative to develop effective programmes to combat them.
“We are all aware of the losses that we incur as a result of these hazards in the Caribbean and the pain and devastation that our people suffer as a result. Can we allow this to continue and possibly to worsen as it has been projected?” she said.
Joseph said continued investments in disaster risk reduction are necessary hence the importance of this undertaking.
“If we are to retard the epidemic of hazard related losses we have experienced over the last decade, continuous investment in disaster risk reduction at the community level and at the national level as well as the regional level is imperative. Building the resiliency of our communities and nations to withstand, and to recover from adversity is extremely critical and it must become and remain a priority,” she pointed out.
Jamaican consultant, Dr.Balfour Spence, will serve as the lead facilitator at this week’s workshop.
During the two days, Dr.Spence will review existing relevant documentation on community level training and preparedness programmes with the view to establishing the model toolkit. The toolkit will be used to train people at the community level on disaster risk reduction.
The toolkit, once finalized, will replace a training manual which was developed by CDEMA in the 1980”s which has been deemed irrelevant.
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