Children could be Agents in Disaster Risk Reduction

The pan-Africa joint project review and phase II planning and training workshop was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

In his opening speech, the State Minister for Disaster Risk Management and Food Security Sector (DRMFSS), Mr. Mitiku Kassa expressed Ethiopia’s support and commitment to the issue of Disaster Risk Reduction by elaborating his ministry’s evolution from response to Disaster Risk Management. He explained that community resilience and disaster risk assessment were being undertaken with full participation of the community as first responders. The link between early warning and early action is being strengthened and is fully people-centered.

Gutu Tesso, Children Emergency Response and Disaster Mitigation Coordinator, WV East Africa Region said building the capacity of national office and ADP staff on Disaster Risk Reduction and Community resilience through experience sharing and project implementation planning was the major objective of the workshop.

Reviewing key findings from Africa Community Resilience Project (ACRP) and Children Emergency Response and Disaster Mitigation (CERDM) pilot projects that were implemented in Lesotho, Ghana and Ethiopia, reflecting on lessons learnt from the pilot phases, sharing experience, identifying best practices from ACRP and CERDM processes and coming up with recommendations for future DRR projects and thereby launching phase II of the ACRP and CERDM projects are among the specific objectives of the undertaking. Paper presentations relating to DRR, discussions on the presentations, and field visit to Lideta ADP’s activities in DRR were among the major activities of the work shop.

The first 3 days of the workshop were reserved for experience sharing, paper presentations and action planning at Harmony hotel. On the fourth day, field visit was under-taken to Lideta ADP, which has been implementing the CERDM project. In attendance were 30 participants from Ghana, Burundi, Kenya, Lesotho and Ethiopia. Main facilitators were ACRP project staff from EAR, SAR and Ethiopia NO.