THE Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) is actively seeking to improve hurricane and other disaster management at the community level.

Its $90-million Building Disaster Resilient Communities project, supported by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), is one such initiative.

The project is designed to foster a closer relationship among local and central government agencies as well as other stakeholders, in a network with communities islandwide, to take sustainable long-term hazard prevention measures.

“Part of this overarching goal is to ensure that communities have the capacity to prepare for, assess damage and analyse needs after every natural or man-made disaster – with particular attention paid to the needs of the vulnerable. So, no community member is left without the assistance they require,” said Nicole Brown, partnership facilitator for the project.

She was speaking on August 12 at the Strengthening Partnerships for Disaster Risk Reduction workshop, held at the Planning Institute of Jamaica in Kingston.

The workshop was the first in a series of activities aimed at developing a partnership-sustainability strategy among stakeholders in disaster risk reduction and management.

So far, formal partnerships have been established with the Red Cross, the Social Development Commission, the Department of Local Government, and the Jamaica Fire Brigade. Other stakeholders engaged in the discussions earlier this month included the Women’s Resource and Outreach Centre, the Water Resources Authority, the National Environment and Planning Agency, the Salvation Army, the Adventist Development Relief Agency, Environmental Solutions and the National Council for the Aged.

“The premise here is that partnerships, and in particular sustainable partnerships, are essential for meeting the project goal and unless we pay some attention to the working relationships related to disaster management and disaster risk reduction, our final outcome will likely be less robust than it could otherwise be,” said Brown.

The three-year project, which started last November, is intended, ultimately, to:

. select vulnerable communities in each parish trained in mitigation and emergency response, with an operational community-developed emergency response plan and an operational community emergency response team;

. select vulnerable communities in each parish and have an operational community-developed disaster mitigation plan – some with relevant micro mitigation projects to be performed under this project; and

. sustainable partnerships in disaster mitigation and emergency response at the community, parish and national levels.

ODPEM is to achieve these outcomes through the identification of vulnerable communities and sensitisation through training.

So far, 26 of 29 communities have been identified for participation in the project, with Trinityville in St Thomas being the pilot community. Trinityville is where activities began and it was also used for in-field training of trainers.

The participating communities were selected with the help of parish disaster co-ordinators and parish councils. They, in collaboration with ODPEM’s regional co-ordinators, are doing the actual intervention.

Meanwhile, after they are selected, the wider stakeholder grouping and the community go through a sensitisation process that includes a needs and hazard vulnerability assessment, using participatory methodologies to engage community members.

Later, there is phased training in basic community disaster management, shelter management, light search and rescue, initial damage assessment, food and supply distribution, first aid/CPR and fire safety.

As training progresses, a community disaster response team is established and the mitigation project identified by the community is implemented.

“One of the lessons of the ODPEM Zonal Committee experience is that it is important to work with and through existing community structures and therefore what the CDRT (community disaster response team) will look like will differ from community to community,” said Brown.

To date, training is ongoing in seven communities while another five have completed the sensitisation phase, with training set to begin over the next few months. Community disaster response teams are being developed in four communities and the 12 communities in which the project is operational are in eight parishes.

Meanwhile, more trainers are being trained to take the project forward.

Brown noted that the implementation and sustainability of the project is dependent on the support of parish councils and parish disaster committees, hence the need to strengthen these partnerships.

“Essentially, we want to build disaster-resilient communities that operate in a sustainable disaster risk-reduction framework,” she said.