Building Community Capacities for Disaster Risk Reduction:  LWR-IIRR Initiative

When communities begin to value the importance of taking measures to reduce the risk to their communities, community leaders can begin to influence local authorities to include plans on reducing and managing community hazards and vulnerabilities. 

In 2004, IIRR and Lutheran World Relief (LWR) forged a partnership to strengthen the capacities of Andean farmers in Potosi province in Peru, and Chota and Huancayo provinces in Bolivia to manage disaster risks more effectively. The project was set up to address the needs of rural poor communities affected by an increasing frequency of longer droughts every few years, and in some cases, annually. 

Partners in Peru and Bolivia received a series of ladderized trainings in community disaster risk reduction. The program, using participatory processes conducted among farmers, development workers, and managers of eleven local partner organizations, identified the capabilities – knowledge, attitude, skills – needed to reduce disaster risk and to effectively respond to community needs and support communities in achieving disaster risk reduction goals. 
 
As a result of this series of trainings, significant change has been observed among participants on their understanding of disaster risk and the actions to take to reduce these at the community level. In Bolivia, five participating organizations spoke of the positive reactions of local authorities. One municipality incorporated the disaster risk reduction initiative in the local development plan and encouraged wider participation of communities and their leaders in looking at risk reduction seriously.  

Following the positive experiences of Latin America, this capacity development processes now have been extended in Asia though a orientation workshop took place in Philippines during June 8-10, 2005  which was designed and conducted by IIRR. Representing headquarters, Asia Regional Office, and country offices of India, Indonesia, Philippines and Sri Lanka, a total of 16 LWR staff participated in this workshop through which participants defined strategic, programmatic and operational implications of institutionalizing CMDRR processes in the context of LWR’s development programs in countries of Asia.

For Asia, the primary goal of this program is to develop capacity of LWR country staff and its partner NGOs  in India, Indonesia, Philippines and Sri Lanka to facilitate CMDRR as an integrated   component of analysis and action with LWR supported development interventions.  Both LWR and IIRR shares  a common perspective to promote Community Managed  Disaster Risk Reduction by which community and their organization can operate Project Management Cycle by their own and gradually increase capacity to sustain the process at their constituency. Further,  capturing and  packaging practice based learning at community, partner organizations and LWR program operations levels  has given central importance. For Asia, the first phase of this collaborative learning and capacity development program targets following activities and achievements: 

• Assessment of training needs per country for the partner NGOs executives, trainers and staff would be engaged in CMDRR facilitation;
• In each of the four countries, training of the LWR partner organizations’ staff on CMDRR  facilitation processes;
• In each of the four countries, training of the LWR partner organizations’ staff on PPMEL facilitation processes.

Implementation of above-mentioned steps would apply an approach of training-action-reflection-training cycle to bridge action, capacity development and learning together as simultaneous interventions. It is envisaged that after one course   of training received by the LWR country office and partner NGOs’ staff, next step would be to apply those processes  in the community, thereafter collaborative  reflection to capture and package  practice based learning on the preceding steps.  After completion of the first phase of this capacity development process, both LWR and IIRR hopes to package practice-generated learning of facilitating Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction processes.

8 Posted on : August 23, 2006