DIPECHO Bangladesh & Emerging Promising Practice
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Transcript of DIPECHO Bangladesh & Emerging Promising Practice
Newsletter One: DIPECHO Bangladesh & Emerging Promising Practice
“Bangladesh is an example to the world community on how a vulnerable developing country can strengthen its resilience against recurrent catastrophic events. Your best practices and lessons learned can help other countries, including others in the region prone to natural disaster”,
Ban Kimoon, Secretary General, UN Every year, events such as conflicts and natural calamities whether man‐made or natural, trigger humanitarian crises in different parts of the world and such crises invariably bring great human suffering. The fundamental task of the
European Commission Directorate General for Humanitarian Aid (DG‐ECHO) is to finance humanitarian operations implemented by partners in crisis zone, with the principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality. ECHO is one of the world largest humanitarian aid donors and ECHO has extended
its supporting hand to Bangladesh, one of the most disaster prone and vulnerable countries in the world, through its several partner organizations. The European Commission Humanitarian Aid
(ECHO) under its DIPECHO program aims to reduce the risk of people who are vulnerable to recurring floods, cyclones and earthquakes through disaster preparedness. This program seeks to establish a partnership of all four key stakeholders, i.e. Community, Local Government, NGOs, and Government in managing disaster
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risks. ECHO not only provides financial support but also regularly monitors humanitarian projects and promotes coordination amongst its partners; strengthens local institutions and supports pilot micro‐projects; provides training opportunities in the humanitarian field and gives its partners technical assistance; constantly evaluates the impact and effectiveness of its operations to make the best possible use of the fund. Since the beginning of DIPECHO in 1996, ECHO has invested more than €180 million in disaster preparedness. The DIPECHO program had been expanding over the years and now covers seven disaster prone regions: the Caribbean, Central America, South America, Central Asia, South Asia, South East Asia, South East Africa and the South West Indian Ocean. In 2008 alone, ECHO has allocated €32.3 million for disaster preparedness in the Central Asia, South East Asia, Central America and South East Africa and South West Indian Ocean. As any other relief provided by ECHO, DIPECHO projects are carried out by European‐based aid agencies and UN agencies in close cooperation with local NGOs and authorities.
Bangladesh is one of the most disaster prone countries in the world. It has a long history of
major disasters and is becoming increasingly vulnerable to various types of large scale disasters such as floods, cyclones and earthquakes, due to various pressures including climate change. The geographical setting of Bangladesh makes the country particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. The mountains and hills bordering almost three‐fourths of the flat, low lying country, along with the funnel shaped Bay of Bengal (the breeding place of catastrophic cyclones) in the South, have made the country a meeting place of life‐giving monsoon rains, but have also subjected it to the catastrophic ravages of natural disasters. Its topography and river morphology also contribute to recurring disasters Countless number of poverty stricken people live in marginalized and vulnerable lands (Chars, embankments etc.) and become the first victims of natural disasters. Their economic insolvency is thus a major cause of their disaster vulnerability. Their problem is further compounded by their literacy level and population density which is highest in Bangladesh (1000 people/sq. km) Over the past three decades, Bangladesh experienced more than 170 large scale natural disasters that killed millions of people and affected more than 400 millions. Seven of the ten deadliest cyclones of the twentieth century hit Bangladesh in the past 40 years, the most recent
Disaster and Bangladesh
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deadly ones cyclone Sidr (2007) and cyclone Aila (2009) took place in a span of less than 2 years. Floods are an annual phenomenon. Other natural hazards faced by Bangladesh are flash floods, landslides, tidal surges, and tornados. The likelihood of abnormal flooding is also increased due to infrastructure development activities that neglect environmental and drainage considerations. Although no major earthquake has hit Bangladesh over the past 70 years, it is situated in a seismically active zone and therefore highly prone to major earthquakes. The meteorological department detected at least 90 earthquakes between May 2007 and July 2008, nine of them above five on the Richter scale and epicentres of 95 percent being within a 600 km radius of Dhaka city. Experts say that these minor tremors indicate the possibility of much more powerful earthquakes hitting the country. According to a seismic zoning map prepared by BUET, 43 percent of Bangladesh is rated at high risk of earthquake. The European Commission Directorate General for Humanitarian Aid – DG ECHO has set up DIPECHO (which stands for Disaster Preparedness ECHO) to improve the capacities of communities at risk to better prepare and protect themselves. The projects funded by the program include simple and inexpensive preparatory measures, often implemented by the communities themselves. They have proven extremely effective in limiting damage and saving lives when hazards suddenly strike. The Fifth DIPECHO Action Plan for South Asia was launched in 2009 with a principal objective to increase the awareness and the response capacities of local communities to potential and frequent natural disasters and to reduce the
effects of these disasters on the most vulnerable. In Bangladesh the European Commission is supporting six DIPECHO projects through its partners namely ActionAid Bangladesh, Islamic Relief, Concern Universal, Plan Bangladesh, IFRC and Oxfam. The Partners are working together to develop a coordination forum to promote higher involvement, greater coordination and collaboration and are hereby collectively called DIPECHO Partners Bangladesh (DPB). The Partners have developed Terms of Reference (ToR) which set out the overall framework for coordination to improve the quality and efficiency of project implementation to the highest international standards whilst recognizing the independence of each partner to pursue its own policies, priorities and approaches and to concentrate on its core competencies.
The Partners believe that even though it is not possible to prevent natural calamities, awareness‐raising and capacity‐building help reduce the loss of life and property, hence the need for enhancing the capacity of communities
The DIPECHO Partners Working Together
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and community level volunteers to respond to disasters. The DIPECHO project directly addresses the limited informational and
organizational capacity of vulnerable and marginalized communities to effectively mitigate the impact of recurring natural disasters in their Districts. It focuses on strengthening the capacity of local communities to access goods, services
DIPECHO PARTNER’S PROJECT LOCATION PER DISTRICT
Pabna ,Dhaka and
Chittagong
Cox’s Bazar
Barguna and Patuakhali
Sylhet and Netrakona
Shariatpur, Faridpur and Rajbari
Dhaka and Barguna
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and, most importantly, information to minimize the harm caused by natural disasters. The partners have spread up in different regions of the country working with the similar goal of enhancing disaster preparedness among Communities and Institutions in Bangladesh. The project activities are being carried out in Dhaka, Chittagong, Pabna, Cox’sBazar, Shariatpur, Faridpur, Barguna, Netrokona, Sylhet and Patuakhali with the help of the local NGOs of these regions.
The activities of the DPB in these regions include: • increasing community awareness and knowledge about hazards and preparedness measures, • enhancing the capacity of communities to cope with the effects of floods and other natural hazards, • strengthening the capacity of social institutions in particular local governance structures (DMCs, community volunteers and school disaster preparedness teams) to mobilize and advocate for effective preparedness and response, • enhancing knowledge and skills of key national and local actors in providing early warning, first aid, search and rescue, safe evacuation, and shelter management services,
• ensuring that local institutions (hospitals, schools and factories) have equipment and capacity to effectively respond to disasters etc.
The activities of the Partners can thus broadly be classified into infrastructure support, advocacy and public awareness raising, mapping and computerization, education, early warning system, research and dissemination, facilitation of coordination, institutional strengthening, and local capacity building and training.
The project implementation timeframe is 15 months (June 2009 to September 2010) and 85% of the fund is provided by ECHO and the remaining 15% by the organizations’ own source. All together, the projects will reach 16,54,678 direct beneficiaries. The direct beneficiaries are the most vulnerable groups which include community members: men,
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women and children, people with disability and elderly, fishermen, garment workers, and those who have a very critical role to play in the event of a disaster including local government personnel, community volunteers and other community action groups, as well as doctors, nurses and other staff of hospitals, etc. These beneficiaries are being capacitated in such a way that they can mobilize another 422,463 more community members to reduce their disaster related risks.
As most of the DPB have been implementing DIPECHO projects for more than one funding cycle in Bangladesh, over the years they have encountered several good practices and learned various factors from their field level experience. Below is a presentation of the cumulative ‘good practices’ and ‘lessons learnt’ of the DPB.
One of the imperative activities of disaster preparedness projects is the risk assessment or vulnerability assessment. Through a combination of participatory approaches and use of scientific data and predictions, the risk environment of communities is evaluated. The information they collect through this process allows communities and local government to better understand their disaster and climatic risks and develop short medium and long term developmental strategies in the form of risk reduction action plans (RRAP) to make communities more resilient to disasters and changing climate.
These plans mainly include preparedness and small scale mitigation work which are within the reach of the community members. Some advocacy measures have been taken by the DIPECHO initiatives and as a result some Union Parishads (UPs) have acknowledged the necessity of keeping a budget provision for the implementation of risk reduction action plans. The funds kept by UDMCs have mainly been allocated for UDMC meetings, early warning dissemination, minor repairing of shelters/road/dam and pre‐positioning of food
Good Practices: Establishment of Disaster Management Fund at Union Level
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for the people who may take shelter during impending disasters. Furthermore and due to the awareness raising efforts undertaken by the DPB, individual families have also been generating disaster management funds at household level. These funds are used for activities such as homestead‐raising, house and dike repairing, raising of ponds, road maintenance and shelter repairing. Early warning message dissemination is one of the vital issues in reducing losses of life during impending disaster. Community‐based early warning systems are particularly important as people are often unable to interpret early
warning messages at micro level or do not receive early warning messages on time. Hence a community based early warning system is required to make the community better prepared. Under DIPECHO pilot initiatives, some community‐led initiatives were undertaken in which community members were empowered to record the early warning messages and properly disseminate them on time. After the devastating cyclone Sidr, network linkages with other organizations like Red
Crescent, Cyclone Preparedness Program of the Govt. Upazila Parishad and Union Parishads were established to better monitor and implement early warning systems. Early warning dissemination centers were established at various levels and these centers disseminated early warning during impending disasters. Also numerous awareness campaigns and simulations were carried out on safe sheltering for enhanced disaster management during impending disasters. As a result, people are now taking into account the early warnings, volunteers help people to evacuate elderly, children, pregnant women and people also spontaneously take shelter in a safer place. It was observed during cyclone RESHMI that most of the Radio Spot Managers closely monitored the weather and disseminated early warning on a regular basis. It is very important for the community groups to understand the notion of volunteerism, the advantages of having community solidarity and its effectiveness in times of emergencies. Not only are communities the ones who are the most affected in times of disasters, they are also the first ones to respond. Hence it is very important to initiate locally acceptable measures which can easily be adopted by the communities and create
Early Warning Message Dissemination
Establishing Linkage with the Community Members
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a sense of ownership to ensure sustainability of the efforts. During our various DP/DRR interventions, communities (with special focus on women) have been involved in many activities with the vision to develop a strong, diverse and trained volunteer workforce who can deliver disaster risk reduction measures at community level. At the same time developing linkages within primary schools, community groups, religious places and media has proved to be a useful tool to organize and sustain the volunteers’ efforts at local level.
Within the pilot initiatives of DIPECHO child participation is highlighted as a cross‐cutting issue. As a part of project initiatives, children’s organizations are capacitated to carry out their own risk assessments which are validated by adults. The Governments’ Community Risk Assessment (CRA) has also been revised to include greater participation/rights of children in the process. By establishing children’s organizations, who are linked to community based organizations and union disaster
management committees (UDMCs), school disaster management committees (SDMC) and with minimum training and facilitation (youth volunteers), children have demonstrated that they are able to plan, implement and monitor their own DRR activities. Having independent children’s groups (with good facilitation and support from adults) has shown children to play an important role in information dissemination, but also in creating a culture of safety, through household preparedness activities. Once adults have realized the potentially of children, they are far more likely to involve them in the implementation of DRR activities ensure the voice and rights of children in the risk reduction process. As local communities are directly affected by disasters, it is very important to increase the response capacity of the communities as a whole. The DIPECHO initiatives emphasizes on building the response capacities and knowledge of the communities through implementing appropriate training programs followed by simulations wherever necessary to test and improve the transfer of knowledge.
Ensuring the Voice and Rights of children in the Risk Reduction
Process
Increased Response Capacity of the Community Members
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Once skills are transferred through various training courses, appropriate equipment is supplied and stored at community level for effective utilization in times of emergencies. Simulation and mock drills involving community members demonstrate the effectiveness of the training delivered. Such activities also constitute an opportunity to link the volunteer network with the government departments responsible for first response. This can effectively strengthen the work force of these departments which is not enough to meet the minimum requirements in disaster situations.
Community sensitization is a fundamental component of any development initiative. However much of the success of community sensitization depends upon the quality of the medium for communication. Under the DIPECHO initiatives, various communication materials have been developed to build community awareness on the benefits of disaster preparedness. Preparedness messages were developed in line with indigenous knowledge and practices so that nothing new is imposed onto community members. Keeping the literacy rate of the local communities in mind, several pictorial illustrations have been made for comprehensive messages dissemination. The need for gender inclusion and consideration for persons with disabilities are also highlighted in the communication materials. Through some reader‐friendly materials, children are sensitized whilst having fun. Also some training modules have been developed in order to allow for effective and timely response in times of disaster. All these tools and modules contain culturally appropriate information, which focuses on existing indigenous knowledge and can be easily understood.
Public Awareness Measures
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Implementing DRR projects raises the challenge of creating community acceptance and ownership as DRR alone is generally not perceived as a priority by the community members. Creating a common vision with the community requires rapport building, sensitization, two‐way information sharing and respect for indigenous knowledge and practices. The need for disaster preparedness and its long‐lasting effects on the social and economical life must be adequately presented to the community members. Dialogues must be promoted among different community stakeholders as to their roles and responsibilities in the development of their local communities. Effective communication mechanisms between community members and local government and awareness‐raising on disaster‐related services available allow for enhanced coordination and greater resilience. Most importantly, community contribution to building disaster resilience should be recognized and community voices heard through ensuring community participation in DRR fora at local, regional, national and international levels.
Establishing local early warning dissemination mechanisms amongst the vulnerable communities and local service providers allows to prevent losses and damages, and to sustain economic development and well‐being of the local populations. Early warning systems should be locally adopted with special emphasis on mock exercises whereby community members practice their roles in the event of a disaster. The role of youth volunteers should be recognized since they can and do play a vital role in message dissemination. Above all an effective early warning system should build onto filtered indigenous knowledge and practices regarding early warning.
Although various external agents like local and international NGOs provide humanitarian assistance after a disaster, the roles and responsibilities of local and national government remain central. Bangladesh has various policies and provisions which clearly define the roles and responsibilities of the different levels of
Lessons Learnt Building Joint Vision with the Community
Local Governance Structures
Early warning
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government in disaster management. Working closely with and building the capacity of local level governance structures is therefore a pre‐requisite to sustain the project activities. This starts with ensuring that grassroots level governance structures are aware and have sufficient knowledge on national policies on disaster. Bangladesh has accomplished a very important work in terms of policies, standing orders, building codes, etc., but local government representatives are not always familiar with these documents or following them. Hence significant awareness raising activities are needed. Coordination contributes to synergy and complementarity and greatly increases the chances for continuity and long term sustainability of the project; as well as scaling up of good practices and streamlining of disaster preparedness in planning of relief and long term development programs.
School‐based disaster preparedness activities provide an opportunity to motivate children and teachers towards building a culture of safety, thereby building individual as well as institutional response capacity. School‐based DRR initiatives can be facilitated through organizing disaster related debates, art
competition and essay competition which stimulate the assimilation of key DRR messages by school students. Schools are excellent platforms to disseminate DP messages and for building a culture of risk prevention from early ages. Apart from creating awareness, school‐based activities also provide a form of entertainment/recreation for students, which contribute to enhanced learning.
• Coordination efforts should start at the project design phase to strengthen networks among beneficiaries and other stakeholders and to maximize the use of expertise and resources available. • A sharing culture and resource data banks among the DIPECHO partners and other DRR actors lead to the reduction of training and IEC material development costs, human resources cost and time constraints. • Regularly sharing project updates lessons learnt with GOB officials expedites project exposure at national level, and facilitates advocacy campaigns towards revising/strengthening the policy framework
School Level Activities
Coordination
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Disaster management is a multi‐dimensional phenomenon which requires addressing the needs of the community in a holistic manner. Disaster management is inclusive of several cross‐cutting factors such as woman and child participation, shifts from service delivery to disaster preparedness etc. Thus, only inclusive approaches to project delivery will yield successful outcomes. A multiplicity of actors has to be involved when it comes to risk management: from local level community members to national government structures, it requires the participation of all segments of a society. There are specific programmatic considerations for people with disabilities and the approach to risk management and mitigation measures also varies according to hazards.
Capital formation (through mobilization of savings) enhances community organizations’ power to realize their full potential. “Savings generated by individual members are the assets of the group and are the first step towards their self‐reliance”. Accumulated savings can be used to implement and sustain some short term measures planned under the risk reduction action plans.
There is a wealth of IEC material developed on DRR in Bangladesh. Of those existing material, many are very good and can be replicated. DIPECHO projects should focus on adapting and improving existing materials in order to avoid duplication of resources and efforts. We also need to ensure that all IEC material developed in Bangladesh are translated in English language for sharing with the international community. School teachers or UDMC are unlikely to attend meetings or training sessions without prior approval from their government officials. Therefore, programme inception workshops and sessions should be conducted to agree on the project activities and define the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder in the project cycle. This should also involve potential direct beneficiaries in order to build the level of trust, ownership and sense of responsibility. Children, like adults, sometimes have the inclination to exaggerate the truth. This was found in meetings where children reported certain things which in fact they had either not done (had been done before project) or that they tried to carry out but received no support from adults. It is important to teach children that quality is better than quantity and that there is no such thing as failure, just hurdles to overcome.
A Holistic Approach to DRR
Ensuring Approval of Local Government to Carry Out Activities
Capital Development
Replicating Existing IEC Material and Making them Bilingual
Exaggerating the Truth
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In order to ensure the active participation of children, making the process fun is very important. However many development practitioners are used to work with adults, not children, and it requires a huge mindset shift and a different way of working. Intensive training for staff is required on child to child methodologies and facilitation in order to ensure children’s participation. Children are powerful change agents and conveyor of new ideas and messages. Besides children are the future of their communities, as a result they have to be considered as an essential entry point for the mainstreaming of DRR.
Editorial Team: Shakeb Nabi, Tanni Tarique and Labonya Niranjan Das ActionAid Bangladesh For further information, please visit our website: www.dipechobd.org Disclaimer: This document has been produced with the financial assistance of European Commission. The views expressed herein should not be taken in any way, to reflect the official opinion of the European Commission
Making DRR Fun is not Easy!
Children are excellent communicators of risk
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