Disaster Risk Reduction

With the objective to build the ability to understand the perceived risk of climate change and fine tune agriculture, tree plantation and other DRR activities; in order to reduce the risk and vulnerability of the poor and marginalized communities of 21 villages under Benipatti Block in Madhubani district this project was implemented during 2009-2012 with the support from Oxfam India.

The basics of the project interventions were to increase people’s dignity and confidence by acknowledging their own traditional knowledge; strengthen people’s skills so that the vulnerable families can adapt measures to utilize different assets like land, water, forest, livestock and their own labour power to increase their resilience. Communities with vulnerable livelihoods, weak preparedness mechanisms, non existing infrastructure, food and environmental insecurity, lack of access to appropriate and adequate resources are more prone to vulnerability. The DRR programme was an attempt to demonstrate a sustainable model to institutionalize systems for disaster risk reduction with focus on community based disaster preparedness and response.

Key Sector of DRR project were Emergency response capacity building, Vulnerable livelihood ,DRR integration in school, Replication sustainability through advocacy , Public health growth and Climate change adaptation. The project was expected to achieve the outcome of

• Strong, better equipped and prepared community towards disaster
• VDPCs identify major issues related to DRR and start interacting with government agencies
• More engaged and accountable government authorities
• Improvement in organizational capacity
• Well coordinated planning, response and preparedness in response activity among inter agency group
• Improved health status of the targeted beneficiaries