BOND DRRG

1
Alternative Applications of Characteristics of a
Disaster Resilient Community

• BOND DRRG
• Oenone Chadburn
• 14th February 2008

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How could you use this resource?

• All stages of the Project Cycle
• Sense of direction vision
• Needs assessment or gaps analysis
• Adjusting the characteristics to become project
  indicators
• Assessing impact and progress
• Corporate accountability and programme design
  (INGOs, International Organisations)
• National / International level policy making

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Bangladesh

• Goal to gently introduce Characteristics to
  Tearfund partner
• See if Characteristics worked in Bangladeshi
  situation
• Gather feedback on their usefulness and
  understanding
• Limited expectations as no previous precedence on
  how it would be received

4
Setting

• Allocated ½ day
• Audience was 12-15 DRR field practitioners and
  managers
• Presented by single person using power point,
  flip charts etc
• Much of time was dedicated to participatory
  discussion

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Methodology Part A

• Presentation on background of characteristics
  (publication NOT distributed at this stage)
• Exercise 1 Develop floor map of typical
  Bangladesh Village
• On coloured card identify hazards and impact of
  those hazards on community
• On separate coloured card then identify what
  activities DRR practitioners would do to reduce
  risk, and its desired outcome

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Part B

• Publication Distributed
• Time allocated to go through the tables both
  individually and collectively
• Group Discussion on where the desired outcomes of
  their activities matched the Characteristics

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Results

• Practitioners saw relevance of Characteristics to
  Bangladesh situation
• Not overwhelmed by the content
• Understood new gaps in their own skills and
  practice
• Valued its linkage back to Hyogo
• ½ day not long enough!

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Examples of matching

• Raising the household onto stilts above the level
  of the annual flood level and establishing a
  flood shelter Thematic Area 5 Characteristic
  4.3 (TA5 4.3)
• Starting a new school system where annual
  flooding coincided with school vacations (so that
  family members are together during flooding
  season and schooling is not disrupted if school
  structure doubles as flood shelter) TA1 5.1
• Ensuring access to safe drinking water and
  awareness on its importance during times of
  flooding TA3 3.5 and TA4 2.5
• Developing alterative cropping practises (such as
  different cropping seasons or flood resistant
  variants) TA4 3.5 and TA3 3.5

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Lessons Learnt

• Exercise useful in defining and debating DRR
• Useful to define where gaps and strengths are
• Looking positively through creating vision was
  helpful
• Exercise has bias towards table 3,4 and 5

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Malawi

• Goal to use Characteristics to assess capacity of
  partners in Malawi
• Designed at a higher level than Bangladesh
• Also designed to help partners compare and learn
  from each other

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Setting

• Allocated ½ day
• Audience was 20 DRR field practitioners and
  managers from 6 partners
• Presented by single person using power point,
  flip charts etc
• Much of time was dedicated to participatory
  discussion

13
Methodology

• Presentation on background of characteristics
• Introduction to Table 4
• Introduced to TNA approach Knowledge Skills
  Attitude
• Collectively brainstormed the Knowledge, Skills,
  Attitudes required as practitioners to achieve
  sub-component 2 of Theme 4

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Methodology cont...

• Broken into 2 groups to discuss what KSA required
  for other sub-components
• Brought back collectively to cluster the KSAs
• Ranking exercise as group along a rope on floor
• Closing discussion to see where there collective
  strengths and weaknesses were

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Results

• Exercise useful in understanding the full scope
  of DRR
• Saw value of partnerships and networking very
  clearly
• Saw more clearly the need for specific technical
  expertise in DRR
• Became apparent how much partners needed to know
  and understand the enabling environment

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Lessons Learnt

• Requires high capacity DRR practitioners to
  complete the exercise
• Sometimes not always willing to admit in public
  forum where weaknesses were
• ½ day not long enough!

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Thank you
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Exercise A

1. Draw a floor map of a typical Bangladeshi village
   (20 mins)
2. Write on separate pieces of paper the disaster
   impact which typically occurs in different parts
   of the village (10 mins)
3. On a different piece of paper what community
   level activities could be carried out to reduce
   risk and what does this look like (30 mins)

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Exercise B

• Discuss the activities and the resulting change
  within the communities one by one, do they
  match characteristics found in the tables?
• If they do, they classify them under Yes
• If they dont classify them under No and ask
  the following
• Is this a new Characteristic?
• If not, do we need to re-design the activity so
  it achieves a characteristic?