Relief and Response to Natural Calamities
We provide immediate relief assistance to disaster-affected families and communities and respond to the calamity through recovery and rehabilitation initiatives to secure their long-term development. Our relief and response work focuses on meeting the immediate needs of disaster-affected families and communities. We provide direct assistance through the distribution of ration kits, the building of emergency shelters, arranging safe drinking water, safe sanitation, and household hygiene items along with the reclamation of farmlands. All relief and response work during natural calamities has been done with the support of our on-ground volunteers and community representatives. Since south Odisha is prone to natural disasters like super cyclones almost every year, we have vast experience in implementing several emergency responses and relief immediately after the calamity. We have responded very actively during the COVID-19 period and provided immediate support and relief to the frontline workers and marginalised communities that had been hit the hardest by the pandemic. The aid was provided in multiple areas including protective gear like PPE kits and masks, and food supplies like dry ration kits.
Prevention and Mitigation
Our prevention and mitigation initiative aims at identifying high-risk locations and preparing the communities living there to better respond to disasters by strengthening their resilience. Our community-centric risk mitigation and vulnerability reduction processes are undertaken in consultation with relevant stakeholders and aim to minimise the impact of disasters on poor and marginalised communities. We promote a culture of prevention and reduction of the impact of disasters through knowledge sharing, capacity building, and promotion of innovative practices at individual, family, and community levels. We promote a participatory approach with the involvement of the community at every stage from planning to implementation, gender needs analysis in prevention and mitigation plans, strategy to access essential services and effective coordination between all stakeholders to promote effective governance in prevention and mitigation.
Facilitating DRR Plan
South Odisha is prone to natural disasters like cyclones and floods 2-3 times every year causing a high degree of economic losses and damage to buildings and infrastructure as well as increasing the vulnerability of the population in the villages. We believe that the more local communities know about their risks by doing their risk assessment, the more they can learn about what they can do to protect themselves. We then have a better chance of reducing risks, loss and damage and using the recovery period as an opportunity to create a stronger and more resilient community. We facilitate the process of developing Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) plans in the villages in all five phases of disaster mitigation, prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery. The planning process involves all stakeholders who are directly responsible for reducing the community risk such as local government departments, governance structures and communities. These approaches provide the opportunity for stakeholders to come together to share information and clarify roles and responsibilities. Once the plan is ready it is shared in the gram sabha and after it is submitted to the government for resource allocation. DRR plans have become a vital tool to encourage greater awareness and cooperation among the communities and government to provide direction and sustained effort for disaster risk management.
