Enhancing Local Action and Community Participation in Disaster Preparedness and Response

Background:

This project addresses the issue of increasing flood risk as a result of climate change and growing human settlements in flood-prone areas. It aims to enhance community resiliency towards disasters especially flood by sharing best management practices; training on town watching exercise in preparing community-based flood hazard maps; developing simple procedures and localised training for community disaster preparedness; and adaptive Training of Trainers (ToT) modules for community - level application.

Objective:

• Objective 1: To form SMART partnership and establish platform to empower the communities with the knowledge and skill to create awareness on environment and impact of climate change that leads to action.
• Objective 2: To mitigate impact of climate disaster with actions that promotes environment protections and safeguarding community well beings.
• Objective 3: To outreach and share importance of environment management, best management practices, local actions and community participation in disaster preparedness and response to a wider community group.

Activities:

1. Stakeholder consultations to be conducted among the identified stakeholders of the identified flood-prone states. Project Working Group (PWG) will also be formed to implement the action plan at the state level.
2. Awareness talks, such as a series of webinars on disaster and sustainable flood management among local communities, are crucial in creating awareness among the people about the types of natural disasters and how to address and mitigate them at the community level including the preparedness.
3. Developing interactive and handy informative materials focused on flood management will be developed and shared through various platforms as well as circulated to a wider range of community groups. Furthermore, the use of medium such as social media, news streams and local agencies news portal will ensure the intended messages disseminated to the public. It is importance to create mileage for the project in addition to engage more people to be aware and encourages local action plan.
4. Centralised Training of Trainers (ToT) for selected states will be carried out to train the identified local community groups/villages on flood disaster management. Various stakeholders (identified agencies and partners) will be approached and engaged to share their expertise in empowering the local communities on disaster preparedness too.
5. Post ToT, one localised site-based action plan to develop Community Based Flood Hazard Map (CBFHM) with the selected host communities for each state will be carried out to empower and foster ownership of the initiative among the communities.
6. To ensure more communities benefit from the knowledge and skills empowered during the ToT and the site-based Post ToT, the representatives of the local community engaged will be encouraged to initiate their own localised site-based activity with their respective communities to improve their flood-preparedness actions and take preventative measures to prepare for flooding or any disaster. The project will provide continuous technical guidance to the communities.
7. One sharing session will be carried out at selected states, where communities/villages engaged, trained and supported will be given the opportunity to share how the activity have impacted them. During the session, each community representing the four states trained and supported during the post ToT will present the CBFHM developed to the respective agencies (for example the land office or the local authority).
8. The end product, which is a pocket size (CBFHM), will also be distributed to local communities and displayed at common areas such as mosque, community hall, schools and other strategic areas for their reference.

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