TOT on Community Based Disaster Risk Reduction

The TOT on Community-Based Disaster Risk Reduction (CBDRR) was organized from 25-31 May 2009 at Kampong Chhnang province. This 7-day training was conducted by ActionAid Cambodia with strong collaboration of National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM) and Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MOEYS) of Kingdom of Cambodia and funded by ECHO. There were 25 practionners from I/NGOs and GOs including ActionAid itself, LWF, Plan International, World Vision, PCDM of and Department of EYS of Banteay Meanchey, Kratie and Svay Rieng, NCDM and Pedagogy Research Department of MOEYS.
The TOT aims to enable participants to be more efficient and effective in promoting the concepts of DRR, and application of its various tools through a participatory approach:
The specific objectives identified are
- To deepen the concept of DRR and its relevance in the overall development of the country;
- To develop facilitation and animation skills on DRR using participatory tools and techniques.
- To provide specific skills to integrate DRR as part of long term national and sub national development plans of the country.
The training was led by Mr. PV Krishnan, an experienced trainer and practitioner in DRR and exposed to various country programmes and a support team. He is well versed with in DRR concepts DIPECHO projects and worked as DIPECHO Manager in NEPAL in the past. He has been exposed to humanitarian programmes and played a leadership role in promoting SPHERE standards in South Asia.
Overall, the course was well received by the participants. Being a dynamically structured workshop ensuring participatory and strategic inputs, the workshop followed daily feedback and review sessions, ensuring that not only did participants received opportunity to comment on the days content and methods but also exposing them to different types of evaluations and reviews.
The facilitation was totally based on participatory methods, giving ample space and time for the participants to share their experiences and ideas while expressing their opinions also. The pre-designed loose structure also ensured that modifications could be included in the subject matters so that participants could relate better with the process. In addition to participatory sharing and learning, there was also scope for power point presentations, brain storming sessions and focused group discussions.
The overall training event was a huge success and naturally, matter of great satisfaction for the facilitators. There are areas to improve and the constant effort to seek improvement will surely ensure that facilitators, organizers and participants will raise the standard of training in future.

See the full report, see full list of participants