IIRR develops capacity in Facilitating Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction in Africa

The IIRR Africa program in partnership with the Latin America program has expanded its capacity to deliver the Facilitating Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction (FCMDRR) courses in the Africa region. This transfer of skills has been spearheaded by Rusty Biñas, the Regional Director for the Latin America program who is IIRR’s lead global expert in CMDRR alongside Hassan Oda, the project manager for the Capacity Building program for the Kenya Drought Cycle Management Program (KDCMP). The KDCMP is a partnership between IIRR Africa and CORDAID to help CORDAID partners working in arid and semi arid areas of Kenya to implement drought management projects.

As of present, six courses have been conducted and 147 senior program managers trained. 145 were drawn from 9 countries in Africa, and one each from India and Australia. During this quarter (July – September) the following courses have been conducted:

The vision for IIRR Africa is to build the capacity of facilitators /experts in the region to train and mentor others to implement the CMDRR approach to disaster programming.

This is a major milestone given that in the past, development staff in Africa desiring training in disaster prevention and mitigation had to travel to the Asian Disaster preparedness center in Thailand or to Europe and America. This resource is now available in Africa at the IIRR Regional Center. In the past year, 11 staff at IIRR have received training in FCMDRR. This mentoring program is part of IIRR Africa’s capacity development investment in its staff.

More courses in CMDRR planned

Another course is planned for UNCHO/OXFAM from 2nd to 11th October in South Sudan. These trainings are part of an initiative by the Emergency Preparedness and Response Unit of the UNOCHA to support communities to transform from relief programs to development programs. The participants will be trainers and replicate similar training in future. As part of this program, IIRR will package the training process, outputs and materials into a trainers guide to be used in future trainings.

2nd International Course in FCMDRR in Uganda this October

IIRR in partnership with UNDP is planning to host the 2nd International course in Facilitating Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction in Kampala, Uganda on October 23 - November 4, 2006. The first course was held in Ecuador in October last year. The international courses attract participants from all over the world. View upcoming course information here.

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Posted on: October 18, 2006