Community Participation In Disaster Management

Community Participation In Disaster Management Though we have argued that community participation in the context of disaster management is imperative, there are still several debates under the context of participatory development that could somehow influence its successful implementation, hence, should be taken into account especially during the planning phase of the CBDRM. First, the complexity of individual motivations. It is difficult to move a community towards a certain direction, particularly if the members have different interests and motivations. As noted earlier, community is a complex social structure comprised of different perspectives, opinions and motivations. Conversely, motivation and willingness to participate is dictated by individual thinking and determined by own underlying interests. Their experiences on disasters could influence their behavior; however for community members who have not experienced extreme natural disaster, raising their interest in prevention and capacity building becomes more difficult as it seems abstract for them, unlike physical or structural measures that are visible and tangible such as installing early warning devices, etc. Similarly, exposure to external aids could influence communitys interest to participate; this is in particular to urban areas, who have become accustomed to receiving external assistance thus their reluctance to undertake risk management on their own (Solo, n.d.). Another area under this is the personal-driven motivations with vested interests that could influence, hamper or even deviate the result of the participatory development process. And politicians or soon to be politicians find this kind of activity personally beneficial for them by earning popularity. Second, participation requires effort and time. The CBDRM implementation is comprised of various activities, such as planning and capacity buildings, that require active and continuous participation from various stakeholders. While these activities involved a considerable time and effort, some community members perceive these series of participation as waste of time and/or economically unproductive activity, thus opt to focus more on their work and earn money, instead. While for the part of the organizer, participatory process such as public consultation is also time consuming. Organizing requires proper and detailed planning for scheduling of activities, identifying stakeholders, sending out invitation and confirming attendance. The quality and productivity of the activity is affected by the possible low turn-out of attendance among target participants. Third, restricted women participation and cultural boundaries. The CBDRM puts emphasis on the different risks and vulnerabilities faced by members of the communities, such that, male perceived risks differently as compared to female, and similar with adult to children. However, some culture restricts participation and voluntarism; concrete example is on women participation. There are some cultures that confine womens role within the boundaries of domestic activities. Despite the current effort to gender mainstream disaster reduction, with the consequent enormous household tasks directly or indirectly imposed to them, these offer women less time to interact in social activities and participate in community development actions. Fourth, local power relation within the community. The dynamics that exists within the community is clearly manifested on the relationship between the rich and poor, elite and commoners, and literate and illiterate. These relationships bring us to the questions on who can really participate, who can talk and verbalize their opinions during public consultations or workshops. Often times, those who are well-informed and have time to participate dominate the discussion, while leaving behind the poor and the illiterate who has the greater degree of vulnerability. To put stress further, the UNDP asserts that the communities who are most vulnerable to natural events are frequently those who have a disproportionately high number of illiterate members (Solo, n.d.). Fifth, local knowledge influenced by local power relations. CBDRM builds on the existing local knowledge to assess community risks, and serve as basis in developing plans. However, local knowledge can be influenced by local power relations, authority and gender (Mosse, 2002). Other personalities or stakeholders may impute their own interests to or influence the local knowledge which may not necessarily resolve the issues of disaster risks or lead to greater and common interests of all of improving community resiliency. And Fifth, creating development fatigue among stakeholders. Since participatory development is among the most popular approaches in development, many development initiatives have embraced and integrated it within their programs and projects. Consultations and/or collaboration among stakeholders has been repeatedly being undertaken along different stages of one or more different programs and projects, this repeated process could eventually create fatigue among stakeholders, especially when despite of continuing consultations no advancement or progress is achieved. These are some of the limitations and challenges that may be faced by project implementers of CBDRM within the scope of participatory development. These limitations only follows that bringing real community participation to risk management is a difficult task which all actors should understand or at least recognize (Solo, n.d.:26). And to understand more what CBDRM is as applied to real world, the next part gives us practical examples illustrating how effective implementation of CBDRM could potentially improve community resiliency. CBDRM Good Practices Globally, CBDRM has been promoted as an approach to improve community resiliency. International development organizations and non-government organizations strongly lobby CBDRM for policy adoption and mainstreaming in the disaster management framework of national and local governments. Currently, most CBDRM projects are led by local and international NGOs, either in partnership with other civil society organizations, NGOs, international development organizations or local government. The UN ISDR compiled good practices in CBDRM that illustrates how communities have worked together towards a common goal and benefitted from their undertaking. Directly lifted from the UN ISDR study, entitled Building Disaster Resilient Communities: Good Practices and Lessons Learned (2007), below are some of the examples of CBDRM practices that link with climate change adaptation and implemented in different countries considered highly vulnerable. Involving community members in increasing public awareness and capacity building through creating information campaigns to enhance the safety of the population at risk is cited as good practice. The project is an information campaign which stimulates creativeness and innovativeness from the local actors and similarly optimizes local talents, knowledge, and local resources in a way easily comprehensible to the local community members. This is a project implemented in Haiti in 22 settlements in coordination with their Local Civil Protection Committees (LCPCs) through the assistance from Oxfam GB. Natural hazards such as earthquakes have been continuously affecting the country of Haiti, while its urban areas are characterized with its dense urban population and dense built areas this make the country more vulnerable (UN-ISDR, 2007). Another good practice is on creating access among low income groups to disaster micro-insurance scheme. Taking into account that risk transfer supports sustainable economic recovery, micro-insurance could serve as a cushion to lessen impact of disaster, particularly among the poor victims whom majority have limited or no access to risk transfer schemes. The micro-insurance represents an innovative approach to help the victims; wherein risk is transferred from the individual level to the community or inter-community levels. With the implementation of micro-insurance, this elicit positive feedbacks from the communities claiming that insurance in times of crisis is essential, the affordability of the scheme makes it accessible for the poor households, and which consequently result to reduced dependence from outside relief. This is the approach of the Afat Vimo scheme, a project implemented in India after a major earthquake exposed the community members to disaster-induced financial loss es. The project is said to be part of the Regional Risk Transfer Initiative, an action learning project of the Gujaratbased All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (UN-ISDR, 2007). With the long drought being experienced, crop failures and the consequent food shortage, this has led a community in Indonesia to identify a mechanism to prevent food shortage. The community established a monitoring system for food security and livelihood and community early warning system largely based from their indigenous knowledge in combination with modern science, which the UN ISDR (2007) considered a good practice. The project has three components: community awareness and indicator development to monitor food security and livelihood; community early warning system; and advocacy on appropriate agricultural system such as promotion of crops suitable for drought-prone land. The project is in partnership with local NGO aiming to increase community resilience from drought in Southeastern Indonesia. The region is characterized by experiencing a three-month rainy season and a nine-month drought season. Problems on food shortage is said to be brought by lack of climate-related knowled ge and information that results to crop failure (UN-ISDR, 2007). Another good practice project where it illustrates that local context of communities can be a dynamic force in reducing risks, is on creating flood and typhoon-resilient homes through employing a cost-effective retrofitting. The project was initiated to put emphasis on the capacity of families and local communities in playing a key role in Vietnams disaster risk reduction strategy and in reducing their vulnerabilities, which during the project implementation, community-based disaster risk reduction, is still not integrated. The process involves community consultation and preventive action planning. The project is Development Workshop France (DWF), a program initiated in Vietnam through Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and European Commission Humanitarian aid Office (ECHO). The severe typhoons and floods affecting the country have resulted to damage and loss of housing in the affected communities (UN-ISDR, 2007). In order to understand current local environmental situation, develop awareness and capacity to deal with, and to contribute to relevant policy formulation, one of the communities in Namibia established an inter-community platform and local-level monitoring as support for local decision making. The plat-form serves as medium for community organization and communication. Moreover, the approach strengthens capacity among the community to coordinate their own activities and preparing their development plans. The local-level monitoring, on the other hand, is used to support information exchange and decision making. The monitoring scheme, where community members themselves have identified the relevant indicators, serves as a tool for identification of environmental changes that may affect their livelihoods; furthermore, the results are used as basis for decisions on management actions, climate variability, policy changes, etc. Overall, the community benefits from the project by improving their capacities and promoting institutional development which consequently lead to enhanced resource management and livelihoods and increased capacity to manage and reduce risks related to drought and desertification and other potential disasters. This project in Namibia has influenced several government policy instruments with on-going derivative projects. Namibia is experiencing drought and desertification which impacts the livelihoods of people living in drylands. Poverty, increasing population, urbanization, naturally variable climate, climate change, lack of community organizations, political issues and other pressures further compound the problem (UN-ISDR, 2007). The convergence of a community-level approach and city governments participation strengthens sustainability and ownership; this is the underlying assumption in one of the CBDRM projects in the Philippines. Wherein, it mainstream community-based mitigation in the city governance through partnering with the local government in the implementation of the project. The project has five (5) components, these are: (i) CBDRM participatory risk assessment training of trainers (ToT) for the city officials, who in turn provide training to communities; reactivation of the City Disaster Coordinating Council and Community Disaster Coordinating Council; institutionalization of a school Disaster Safety Day; celebration of the Disaster Safety Day in all schools; developing and implementing a City Disaster Risk Reduction Plan. This is a CBDRM project implemented in the Philippines through Asian Disaster Preparedness Center and in partnership with the city local government. The country is among countrie s with highest exposure to natural hazards, a climate hotspot and belongs to the most natural disaster prone countries (UN-ISDR, 2007). These are some of the CBDRM examples which, as we noted and apparent feature in these cases, are highly participatory in nature, engaging various stakeholders in different phases of project management as resource base, while trying to address vulnerabilities and recognizing impacts of natural hazards with the goal of strengthening community resiliency. However linking to the shortcomings of participatory development, these initiatives have, likewise, recognized challenges in the implementation of the project from the perspective of the project team, community level, and in partnering with the local government. For the part of the project organizer, it is on the project activities being time consuming which requires them to maintain efforts and demonstrate firmness, in terms of supervision and support, to ensure good quality output. For community level, it is on convincing communities on the process of participatory development and reassuring that social systems and cultures would be respected; motivating community members and elaborating the benefits they can derive from the project; maintaining community consensus and achieving behavioral change; ensuring and keeping up community participation throughout the project period through motivation; and enhancing or broadening community members local knowledge to enable a more participa tory assessment. Moreover, the political and administrative culture such as top-down approach and government-led planning affecting project implementation; while support both from the local government and the community for long-term sustainability (UN-ISDR, 2007). The last part allows us to step back from the purpose of this study, summarizing the arguments and concluding whether CBDRM is an effective approach to climate change adaptation. Likewise, it will give us some ideas where the study can have wider implications for possible future focus of research.

Community Participation In Disaster Management

Community Participation In Disaster Management Though we have argued that community participation in the context of disaster management is imperative, there are still several debates under the context of participatory development that could somehow influence its successful implementation, hence, should be taken into account especially during the planning phase of the CBDRM. First, the complexity of individual motivations. It is difficult to move a community towards a certain direction, particularly if the members have different interests and motivations. As noted earlier, community is a complex social structure comprised of different perspectives, opinions and motivations. Conversely, motivation and willingness to participate is dictated by individual thinking and determined by own underlying interests. Their experiences on disasters could influence their behavior; however for community members who have not experienced extreme natural disaster, raising their interest in prevention and capacity building becomes more difficult as it seems abstract for them, unlike physical or structural measures that are visible and tangible such as installing early warning devices, etc. Similarly, exposure to external aids could influence communitys interest to participate; this is in particular to urban areas, who have become accustomed to receiving external assistance thus their reluctance to undertake risk management on their own (Solo, n.d.). Another area under this is the personal-driven motivations with vested interests that could influence, hamper or even deviate the result of the participatory development process. And politicians or soon to be politicians find this kind of activity personally beneficial for them by earning popularity. Second, participation requires effort and time. The CBDRM implementation is comprised of various activities, such as planning and capacity buildings, that require active and continuous participation from various stakeholders. While these activities involved a considerable time and effort, some community members perceive these series of participation as waste of time and/or economically unproductive activity, thus opt to focus more on their work and earn money, instead. While for the part of the organizer, participatory process such as public consultation is also time consuming. Organizing requires proper and detailed planning for scheduling of activities, identifying stakeholders, sending out invitation and confirming attendance. The quality and productivity of the activity is affected by the possible low turn-out of attendance among target participants. Third, restricted women participation and cultural boundaries. The CBDRM puts emphasis on the different risks and vulnerabilities faced by members of the communities, such that, male perceived risks differently as compared to female, and similar with adult to children. However, some culture restricts participation and voluntarism; concrete example is on women participation. There are some cultures that confine womens role within the boundaries of domestic activities. Despite the current effort to gender mainstream disaster reduction, with the consequent enormous household tasks directly or indirectly imposed to them, these offer women less time to interact in social activities and participate in community development actions. Fourth, local power relation within the community. The dynamics that exists within the community is clearly manifested on the relationship between the rich and poor, elite and commoners, and literate and illiterate. These relationships bring us to the questions on who can really participate, who can talk and verbalize their opinions during public consultations or workshops. Often times, those who are well-informed and have time to participate dominate the discussion, while leaving behind the poor and the illiterate who has the greater degree of vulnerability. To put stress further, the UNDP asserts that the communities who are most vulnerable to natural events are frequently those who have a disproportionately high number of illiterate members (Solo, n.d.). Fifth, local knowledge influenced by local power relations. CBDRM builds on the existing local knowledge to assess community risks, and serve as basis in developing plans. However, local knowledge can be influenced by local power relations, authority and gender (Mosse, 2002). Other personalities or stakeholders may impute their own interests to or influence the local knowledge which may not necessarily resolve the issues of disaster risks or lead to greater and common interests of all of improving community resiliency. And Fifth, creating development fatigue among stakeholders. Since participatory development is among the most popular approaches in development, many development initiatives have embraced and integrated it within their programs and projects. Consultations and/or collaboration among stakeholders has been repeatedly being undertaken along different stages of one or more different programs and projects, this repeated process could eventually create fatigue among stakeholders, especially when despite of continuing consultations no advancement or progress is achieved. These are some of the limitations and challenges that may be faced by project implementers of CBDRM within the scope of participatory development. These limitations only follows that bringing real community participation to risk management is a difficult task which all actors should understand or at least recognize (Solo, n.d.:26). And to understand more what CBDRM is as applied to real world, the next part gives us practical examples illustrating how effective implementation of CBDRM could potentially improve community resiliency. CBDRM Good Practices Globally, CBDRM has been promoted as an approach to improve community resiliency. International development organizations and non-government organizations strongly lobby CBDRM for policy adoption and mainstreaming in the disaster management framework of national and local governments. Currently, most CBDRM projects are led by local and international NGOs, either in partnership with other civil society organizations, NGOs, international development organizations or local government. The UN ISDR compiled good practices in CBDRM that illustrates how communities have worked together towards a common goal and benefitted from their undertaking. Directly lifted from the UN ISDR study, entitled Building Disaster Resilient Communities: Good Practices and Lessons Learned (2007), below are some of the examples of CBDRM practices that link with climate change adaptation and implemented in different countries considered highly vulnerable. Involving community members in increasing public awareness and capacity building through creating information campaigns to enhance the safety of the population at risk is cited as good practice. The project is an information campaign which stimulates creativeness and innovativeness from the local actors and similarly optimizes local talents, knowledge, and local resources in a way easily comprehensible to the local community members. This is a project implemented in Haiti in 22 settlements in coordination with their Local Civil Protection Committees (LCPCs) through the assistance from Oxfam GB. Natural hazards such as earthquakes have been continuously affecting the country of Haiti, while its urban areas are characterized with its dense urban population and dense built areas this make the country more vulnerable (UN-ISDR, 2007). Another good practice is on creating access among low income groups to disaster micro-insurance scheme. Taking into account that risk transfer supports sustainable economic recovery, micro-insurance could serve as a cushion to lessen impact of disaster, particularly among the poor victims whom majority have limited or no access to risk transfer schemes. The micro-insurance represents an innovative approach to help the victims; wherein risk is transferred from the individual level to the community or inter-community levels. With the implementation of micro-insurance, this elicit positive feedbacks from the communities claiming that insurance in times of crisis is essential, the affordability of the scheme makes it accessible for the poor households, and which consequently result to reduced dependence from outside relief. This is the approach of the Afat Vimo scheme, a project implemented in India after a major earthquake exposed the community members to disaster-induced financial loss es. The project is said to be part of the Regional Risk Transfer Initiative, an action learning project of the Gujaratbased All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (UN-ISDR, 2007). With the long drought being experienced, crop failures and the consequent food shortage, this has led a community in Indonesia to identify a mechanism to prevent food shortage. The community established a monitoring system for food security and livelihood and community early warning system largely based from their indigenous knowledge in combination with modern science, which the UN ISDR (2007) considered a good practice. The project has three components: community awareness and indicator development to monitor food security and livelihood; community early warning system; and advocacy on appropriate agricultural system such as promotion of crops suitable for drought-prone land. The project is in partnership with local NGO aiming to increase community resilience from drought in Southeastern Indonesia. The region is characterized by experiencing a three-month rainy season and a nine-month drought season. Problems on food shortage is said to be brought by lack of climate-related knowled ge and information that results to crop failure (UN-ISDR, 2007). Another good practice project where it illustrates that local context of communities can be a dynamic force in reducing risks, is on creating flood and typhoon-resilient homes through employing a cost-effective retrofitting. The project was initiated to put emphasis on the capacity of families and local communities in playing a key role in Vietnams disaster risk reduction strategy and in reducing their vulnerabilities, which during the project implementation, community-based disaster risk reduction, is still not integrated. The process involves community consultation and preventive action planning. The project is Development Workshop France (DWF), a program initiated in Vietnam through Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and European Commission Humanitarian aid Office (ECHO). The severe typhoons and floods affecting the country have resulted to damage and loss of housing in the affected communities (UN-ISDR, 2007). In order to understand current local environmental situation, develop awareness and capacity to deal with, and to contribute to relevant policy formulation, one of the communities in Namibia established an inter-community platform and local-level monitoring as support for local decision making. The plat-form serves as medium for community organization and communication. Moreover, the approach strengthens capacity among the community to coordinate their own activities and preparing their development plans. The local-level monitoring, on the other hand, is used to support information exchange and decision making. The monitoring scheme, where community members themselves have identified the relevant indicators, serves as a tool for identification of environmental changes that may affect their livelihoods; furthermore, the results are used as basis for decisions on management actions, climate variability, policy changes, etc. Overall, the community benefits from the project by improving their capacities and promoting institutional development which consequently lead to enhanced resource management and livelihoods and increased capacity to manage and reduce risks related to drought and desertification and other potential disasters. This project in Namibia has influenced several government policy instruments with on-going derivative projects. Namibia is experiencing drought and desertification which impacts the livelihoods of people living in drylands. Poverty, increasing population, urbanization, naturally variable climate, climate change, lack of community organizations, political issues and other pressures further compound the problem (UN-ISDR, 2007). The convergence of a community-level approach and city governments participation strengthens sustainability and ownership; this is the underlying assumption in one of the CBDRM projects in the Philippines. Wherein, it mainstream community-based mitigation in the city governance through partnering with the local government in the implementation of the project. The project has five (5) components, these are: (i) CBDRM participatory risk assessment training of trainers (ToT) for the city officials, who in turn provide training to communities; reactivation of the City Disaster Coordinating Council and Community Disaster Coordinating Council; institutionalization of a school Disaster Safety Day; celebration of the Disaster Safety Day in all schools; developing and implementing a City Disaster Risk Reduction Plan. This is a CBDRM project implemented in the Philippines through Asian Disaster Preparedness Center and in partnership with the city local government. The country is among countrie s with highest exposure to natural hazards, a climate hotspot and belongs to the most natural disaster prone countries (UN-ISDR, 2007). These are some of the CBDRM examples which, as we noted and apparent feature in these cases, are highly participatory in nature, engaging various stakeholders in different phases of project management as resource base, while trying to address vulnerabilities and recognizing impacts of natural hazards with the goal of strengthening community resiliency. However linking to the shortcomings of participatory development, these initiatives have, likewise, recognized challenges in the implementation of the project from the perspective of the project team, community level, and in partnering with the local government. For the part of the project organizer, it is on the project activities being time consuming which requires them to maintain efforts and demonstrate firmness, in terms of supervision and support, to ensure good quality output. For community level, it is on convincing communities on the process of participatory development and reassuring that social systems and cultures would be respected; motivating community members and elaborating the benefits they can derive from the project; maintaining community consensus and achieving behavioral change; ensuring and keeping up community participation throughout the project period through motivation; and enhancing or broadening community members local knowledge to enable a more participa tory assessment. Moreover, the political and administrative culture such as top-down approach and government-led planning affecting project implementation; while support both from the local government and the community for long-term sustainability (UN-ISDR, 2007). The last part allows us to step back from the purpose of this study, summarizing the arguments and concluding whether CBDRM is an effective approach to climate change adaptation. Likewise, it will give us some ideas where the study can have wider implications for possible future focus of research.

Community Participation In Disaster Management

Community Participation In Disaster Management Though we have argued that community participation in the context of disaster management is imperative, there are still several debates under the context of participatory development that could somehow influence its successful implementation, hence, should be taken into account especially during the planning phase of the CBDRM. First, the complexity of individual motivations. It is difficult to move a community towards a certain direction, particularly if the members have different interests and motivations. As noted earlier, community is a complex social structure comprised of different perspectives, opinions and motivations. Conversely, motivation and willingness to participate is dictated by individual thinking and determined by own underlying interests. Their experiences on disasters could influence their behavior; however for community members who have not experienced extreme natural disaster, raising their interest in prevention and capacity building becomes more difficult as it seems abstract for them, unlike physical or structural measures that are visible and tangible such as installing early warning devices, etc. Similarly, exposure to external aids could influence communitys interest to participate; this is in particular to urban areas, who have become accustomed to receiving external assistance thus their reluctance to undertake risk management on their own (Solo, n.d.). Another area under this is the personal-driven motivations with vested interests that could influence, hamper or even deviate the result of the participatory development process. And politicians or soon to be politicians find this kind of activity personally beneficial for them by earning popularity. Second, participation requires effort and time. The CBDRM implementation is comprised of various activities, such as planning and capacity buildings, that require active and continuous participation from various stakeholders. While these activities involved a considerable time and effort, some community members perceive these series of participation as waste of time and/or economically unproductive activity, thus opt to focus more on their work and earn money, instead. While for the part of the organizer, participatory process such as public consultation is also time consuming. Organizing requires proper and detailed planning for scheduling of activities, identifying stakeholders, sending out invitation and confirming attendance. The quality and productivity of the activity is affected by the possible low turn-out of attendance among target participants. Third, restricted women participation and cultural boundaries. The CBDRM puts emphasis on the different risks and vulnerabilities faced by members of the communities, such that, male perceived risks differently as compared to female, and similar with adult to children. However, some culture restricts participation and voluntarism; concrete example is on women participation. There are some cultures that confine womens role within the boundaries of domestic activities. Despite the current effort to gender mainstream disaster reduction, with the consequent enormous household tasks directly or indirectly imposed to them, these offer women less time to interact in social activities and participate in community development actions. Fourth, local power relation within the community. The dynamics that exists within the community is clearly manifested on the relationship between the rich and poor, elite and commoners, and literate and illiterate. These relationships bring us to the questions on who can really participate, who can talk and verbalize their opinions during public consultations or workshops. Often times, those who are well-informed and have time to participate dominate the discussion, while leaving behind the poor and the illiterate who has the greater degree of vulnerability. To put stress further, the UNDP asserts that the communities who are most vulnerable to natural events are frequently those who have a disproportionately high number of illiterate members (Solo, n.d.). Fifth, local knowledge influenced by local power relations. CBDRM builds on the existing local knowledge to assess community risks, and serve as basis in developing plans. However, local knowledge can be influenced by local power relations, authority and gender (Mosse, 2002). Other personalities or stakeholders may impute their own interests to or influence the local knowledge which may not necessarily resolve the issues of disaster risks or lead to greater and common interests of all of improving community resiliency. And Fifth, creating development fatigue among stakeholders. Since participatory development is among the most popular approaches in development, many development initiatives have embraced and integrated it within their programs and projects. Consultations and/or collaboration among stakeholders has been repeatedly being undertaken along different stages of one or more different programs and projects, this repeated process could eventually create fatigue among stakeholders, especially when despite of continuing consultations no advancement or progress is achieved. These are some of the limitations and challenges that may be faced by project implementers of CBDRM within the scope of participatory development. These limitations only follows that bringing real community participation to risk management is a difficult task which all actors should understand or at least recognize (Solo, n.d.:26). And to understand more what CBDRM is as applied to real world, the next part gives us practical examples illustrating how effective implementation of CBDRM could potentially improve community resiliency. CBDRM Good Practices Globally, CBDRM has been promoted as an approach to improve community resiliency. International development organizations and non-government organizations strongly lobby CBDRM for policy adoption and mainstreaming in the disaster management framework of national and local governments. Currently, most CBDRM projects are led by local and international NGOs, either in partnership with other civil society organizations, NGOs, international development organizations or local government. The UN ISDR compiled good practices in CBDRM that illustrates how communities have worked together towards a common goal and benefitted from their undertaking. Directly lifted from the UN ISDR study, entitled Building Disaster Resilient Communities: Good Practices and Lessons Learned (2007), below are some of the examples of CBDRM practices that link with climate change adaptation and implemented in different countries considered highly vulnerable. Involving community members in increasing public awareness and capacity building through creating information campaigns to enhance the safety of the population at risk is cited as good practice. The project is an information campaign which stimulates creativeness and innovativeness from the local actors and similarly optimizes local talents, knowledge, and local resources in a way easily comprehensible to the local community members. This is a project implemented in Haiti in 22 settlements in coordination with their Local Civil Protection Committees (LCPCs) through the assistance from Oxfam GB. Natural hazards such as earthquakes have been continuously affecting the country of Haiti, while its urban areas are characterized with its dense urban population and dense built areas this make the country more vulnerable (UN-ISDR, 2007). Another good practice is on creating access among low income groups to disaster micro-insurance scheme. Taking into account that risk transfer supports sustainable economic recovery, micro-insurance could serve as a cushion to lessen impact of disaster, particularly among the poor victims whom majority have limited or no access to risk transfer schemes. The micro-insurance represents an innovative approach to help the victims; wherein risk is transferred from the individual level to the community or inter-community levels. With the implementation of micro-insurance, this elicit positive feedbacks from the communities claiming that insurance in times of crisis is essential, the affordability of the scheme makes it accessible for the poor households, and which consequently result to reduced dependence from outside relief. This is the approach of the Afat Vimo scheme, a project implemented in India after a major earthquake exposed the community members to disaster-induced financial loss es. The project is said to be part of the Regional Risk Transfer Initiative, an action learning project of the Gujaratbased All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (UN-ISDR, 2007). With the long drought being experienced, crop failures and the consequent food shortage, this has led a community in Indonesia to identify a mechanism to prevent food shortage. The community established a monitoring system for food security and livelihood and community early warning system largely based from their indigenous knowledge in combination with modern science, which the UN ISDR (2007) considered a good practice. The project has three components: community awareness and indicator development to monitor food security and livelihood; community early warning system; and advocacy on appropriate agricultural system such as promotion of crops suitable for drought-prone land. The project is in partnership with local NGO aiming to increase community resilience from drought in Southeastern Indonesia. The region is characterized by experiencing a three-month rainy season and a nine-month drought season. Problems on food shortage is said to be brought by lack of climate-related knowled ge and information that results to crop failure (UN-ISDR, 2007). Another good practice project where it illustrates that local context of communities can be a dynamic force in reducing risks, is on creating flood and typhoon-resilient homes through employing a cost-effective retrofitting. The project was initiated to put emphasis on the capacity of families and local communities in playing a key role in Vietnams disaster risk reduction strategy and in reducing their vulnerabilities, which during the project implementation, community-based disaster risk reduction, is still not integrated. The process involves community consultation and preventive action planning. The project is Development Workshop France (DWF), a program initiated in Vietnam through Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and European Commission Humanitarian aid Office (ECHO). The severe typhoons and floods affecting the country have resulted to damage and loss of housing in the affected communities (UN-ISDR, 2007). In order to understand current local environmental situation, develop awareness and capacity to deal with, and to contribute to relevant policy formulation, one of the communities in Namibia established an inter-community platform and local-level monitoring as support for local decision making. The plat-form serves as medium for community organization and communication. Moreover, the approach strengthens capacity among the community to coordinate their own activities and preparing their development plans. The local-level monitoring, on the other hand, is used to support information exchange and decision making. The monitoring scheme, where community members themselves have identified the relevant indicators, serves as a tool for identification of environmental changes that may affect their livelihoods; furthermore, the results are used as basis for decisions on management actions, climate variability, policy changes, etc. Overall, the community benefits from the project by improving their capacities and promoting institutional development which consequently lead to enhanced resource management and livelihoods and increased capacity to manage and reduce risks related to drought and desertification and other potential disasters. This project in Namibia has influenced several government policy instruments with on-going derivative projects. Namibia is experiencing drought and desertification which impacts the livelihoods of people living in drylands. Poverty, increasing population, urbanization, naturally variable climate, climate change, lack of community organizations, political issues and other pressures further compound the problem (UN-ISDR, 2007). The convergence of a community-level approach and city governments participation strengthens sustainability and ownership; this is the underlying assumption in one of the CBDRM projects in the Philippines. Wherein, it mainstream community-based mitigation in the city governance through partnering with the local government in the implementation of the project. The project has five (5) components, these are: (i) CBDRM participatory risk assessment training of trainers (ToT) for the city officials, who in turn provide training to communities; reactivation of the City Disaster Coordinating Council and Community Disaster Coordinating Council; institutionalization of a school Disaster Safety Day; celebration of the Disaster Safety Day in all schools; developing and implementing a City Disaster Risk Reduction Plan. This is a CBDRM project implemented in the Philippines through Asian Disaster Preparedness Center and in partnership with the city local government. The country is among countrie s with highest exposure to natural hazards, a climate hotspot and belongs to the most natural disaster prone countries (UN-ISDR, 2007). These are some of the CBDRM examples which, as we noted and apparent feature in these cases, are highly participatory in nature, engaging various stakeholders in different phases of project management as resource base, while trying to address vulnerabilities and recognizing impacts of natural hazards with the goal of strengthening community resiliency. However linking to the shortcomings of participatory development, these initiatives have, likewise, recognized challenges in the implementation of the project from the perspective of the project team, community level, and in partnering with the local government. For the part of the project organizer, it is on the project activities being time consuming which requires them to maintain efforts and demonstrate firmness, in terms of supervision and support, to ensure good quality output. For community level, it is on convincing communities on the process of participatory development and reassuring that social systems and cultures would be respected; motivating community members and elaborating the benefits they can derive from the project; maintaining community consensus and achieving behavioral change; ensuring and keeping up community participation throughout the project period through motivation; and enhancing or broadening community members local knowledge to enable a more participa tory assessment. Moreover, the political and administrative culture such as top-down approach and government-led planning affecting project implementation; while support both from the local government and the community for long-term sustainability (UN-ISDR, 2007). The last part allows us to step back from the purpose of this study, summarizing the arguments and concluding whether CBDRM is an effective approach to climate change adaptation. Likewise, it will give us some ideas where the study can have wider implications for possible future focus of research.

Speech Community :: essays research papers

Speech Community Contribution There is an infinite amount of chat rooms available on the internet and each one can be defined as its own speech community. I have chosen to analyze a chat room that is devoted to the hit Fox reality show, American Idol. The transcript used was from a chat session that occurred at 10:00 PM on March 27, 2005. This online chat room seemed to be the source of a continuous flow of opinionated statements regarding the television show. Due to the anonymity of the internet, members of the many speech communities within are uneasily identified. Members tend to rely solely on â€Å"screen names† for identification purposes. With names such as TanBear251 and MegaBob12, most statistical information regarding the identity of participants is limited. The context and purpose of the chat room, however, allow for various limited conclusions to be drawn. For the American Idol chat room, it can be assumed that participants include people who watch the television show regularly. These people are likely to statistically fall into the show’s target audience in regards to age and income, among other factors. The target audience of American Idol consists of middle to upper-middle class viewers between the ages of 20 and 45 years of age. No physical location can truly be defined for this speech event. One participant may reside in Houston, Texas, while another may live in Puerto Rico. Due to the time of day, a casual setting can be assumed since it is likely that most participants are located within their own homes. Participation is fully voluntary and in most cases is for enjoyment purposes.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  For this chat room in particular, knowledge truly is power. The status of a participant grows with their expertise on a subject of discussion. The chat room â€Å"regulars† seem to hold a higher status that those who are entering for the first time. This is seen with the amount of posted messages a person makes. Those who regularly participate in the chat room from day to day dominate the discussion while newcomers tend to sit back and watch. In order to gain inclusion in a discussion, one must prove themselves as knowledgeable about the subject at hand.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Some of the barriers that coexist with chat room communication include a limited ability to show emotion as well as a tedious typing requirement. To address these issues, many new abbreviated expressions have been introduced.

“The Secret Life of Bees” Literary Analysis Essay

Inevitable conflicts with parents happen frequently in the lives of many adolescents. In the novel â€Å"The Secret Life of Bees,† a young girl named Lily Owens runs away from home, leaving her abusive father behind, on a hunt for more connections to her dead mother, Deborah. Kidd places obstacles of parental conflict for Lily throughout her whole novel. Lily battles with the internal conflict of the knowledge that she killed her own mother and the struggle in finding out the truth.The sources of her conflict with her dead mother include the information she receives from August and T. Ray, her sense of feeling unwanted, and her longing to experience love of a family. Sue Monk Kidd uses this conflict to show that during Lily’s strife to overcome her conflicts she finds herself and realizes that she already has a complete family. Kidd does this to relay a message to the readers so that they may understand that the mother Lily searched for lay inside of her after all and s he is able to create her own power, proving the strength in women.In â€Å"The Secret Life of Bees,† Kidd uses the information Lily receives from her father T. Ray and August to create and further fuel the conflict between Lily and Deborah so that the reader understands the strength in the unity and also individuality of women. The conflict begins when Lily discovers from T. Ray that she was the one to kill her mother by accidently shooting her (Kidd 18-19). She later learns from T. Ray that Deborah had ran away, leaving Lily, and had only come back for her things and not her daughter when she had shot her (Kidd 39). During the novel, Lily keeps a strong distaste for her father and does not believe him when he tells her this.However, Lily does begin to feel worthless and as if she were a horrible child as the idea of her killing her own mother grows on her. She then learns the truth after she runs away from home and finds a family of women who knew Deborah, including a woman named August. Throughout the novel, Lily builds a strong bond with August and trusts her when she tells her that her mother ran away from Lily and T. Ray and left her, but had returned to get her when she was killed. Kidd uses Lily’s knowledge of her mother to provide Lily with a reason to loathe her mother after having such a perfect image of her. However, Lily overcomes this conflict by finding her place with her new  family of strong women that teach her to persevere and listen to the mother inside her.Kidd also uses Lily’s weakness of feeling unwanted to prove that her parental conflict with her mother before she died had affected Lily long-term, yet left her with women that taught her to stand strong. When Lily learns that her mother became pregnant with her and was forced to marry T. Ray unhappily, she realized that her mother had not wanted her. Kidd writes as the consciousness of Lily: â€Å"How dare she? How dare she leave me? I was her child?† (Kidd 259). This pass into Lily’s thoughts gives the reader the idea that even years after her mother’s mistake of leaving, she had been scarred.Lily’s fire of aversion toward her deceased mother is fueled by the thought that she was an unwanted child by her mother, as well as her abusive father, T. Ray. Kidd provides this adversity for Lily throughout her novel to offer a comfort for Lily by the end of the book from the Daughters of Mary so that the reader understands the strong bond between powerful women. Lily finally finds clarity and realizes that she is not unwanted by her â€Å"stand-in mothers.†Sue Monk Kidd also uses Lily’s longing for a family connection and love from the people surrounding her to show that when women come together to heal each other’s wounds, such as Lily’s drawn out conflict with her mother, they can create a true sanctuary of a loving family. In the novel, Lily believes the only way to feel a mother’s lo ve comes from her biological mother, which again created the conflict between Lily and Deborah. Lily longs for this love because she has never experienced it, and she has kept false hope in her mother’s love until the resolution of the novel. However, she overlooks the women she is with daily that have devoted themselves to helping her cope with her conflicts.By the end of the novel, Kidd gives Lily the realization that she has had a family that loves her unconditionally the whole time she was searching for one. This is proven through the last sentence of the novel, quoted â€Å"I have more mothers than any eight girls off the street. They are the moons shining over me†(By saying this, Lily shows her appreciation for her multiple mothers and her new family for guiding her and helping her overcome all of the differences in her life, as well as the horrible, yet teachable, conflict with her dead mother.In conclusion, Kidd wants her readers to find the message of determin ation and pressing on to focus on the voice inside of oneself through Lily’s story. Parental conflicts occur daily in many teen lives but rarely do they scar them as Lily Owens did. Although the hurtful information she was fed, her sensitivity to feeling unwanted, and her lack of experiencing a loving family led to a conflict with her idea of her dead mother that was built over time, Lily’s ability to overcome her past was aided by women that taught her to find the power inside of her.Her conflicts guide her to new places where she can become her own and mature into a strong woman. She found her home, her family, and herself by conquering her battles and moving on, which relates to Kidd’s intention of her novel: Only the factors determination and perseverance on one’s own shape one’s path, not the conflicts of his/her past.

The National School Lunch Program - 1258 Words

Everyone loves the idea of a government that truly cares about him or her. Especially a government that would go so far as to layout a healthy diet plan to insure the health of your children and to battle childhood obesity. It is great that the government is concerned about adolescent obesity and the nutrition students receive at school. However, the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) Food and Nutrition Guidelines provide more problems for schools and they need to be eradicated, as well as repealing the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The NSLP is â€Å"a federally assisted meal program operating in public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions. It provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches to children each school day. The program was established under the National School Lunch Act, signed by President Harry Truman in 1946† (National). It was created after a study was conducted by congress into why so many young men did not meet the requirements of the WWII draft. It was found that there was a connection between physical deficiencies and malnutrition during adolescence. After the study was published, the government took it upon itself to regulate what children ate. Its focus has now been shifted from battling malnutrition to battling childhood obesity, yet there are plenty of statistics that denote childhood obesity is not caused entirely by poor food choices. Today, one-third of children and adolescents in the U.S. are overweightShow MoreRelatedThe National School Lunch Program Essay856 Words   |  4 PagesIntroduction The National School Lunch Program began after the great depression. The government began to send farm commodities to schools in hopes of helping malnourished children. The National School Lunch Program provides nutrition to children across the United States. There are strict guidelines that school districts must follow to be eligible to participate in the National School Lunch Program funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. What is wrong with school lunches? The monies receivedRead MoreThe National School Lunch Program987 Words   |  4 Pagesstrives to provide healthier food for schools. Let’s Move! is meant to empower those who wish to make a difference and reminds us that everybody has a role to play when it comes to reducing childhood obesity. The Federal Government’s role also comes into play with the National School Lunch Program. The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program that operates in over 100,000 schools and child care facilities. Those who participate in this program get cash subsidies as well as foodRead MoreThe National School Lunch Program1616 Words   |  7 PagesAbstract The National School Lunch Program is a great resource for schools to use, to help provide children whom may not be able to afford their own lunches. The problem with the program though is that the recent changes to the requirements schools must follow make it difficult to provide lunches that are appealing and fulfilling to students. Schools also find that it is costing them more to try and follow these requirements and there is a lot more waste because students are not happy. TheRead MoreThe National School Lunch Program760 Words   |  4 PagesThe National School Lunch Program is a federally funded meal program operating in over 100,000 public. It provides nutritionally balanced, low†cost or free lunches to more than 31 million children each school day in 2012 based on the childs household income (USDA). The program is managed by the Food and Nutrition Service at the Federal level and by a State education agency at the state level. We will be looking at the statistics of the National Lunch Program for five local schools, and compareRead MoreThe National School Lunch Program1019 Words   |  5 Pagesand their education level. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, â€Å"about fifteen million children in the united states, twenty-one percent of all children, live in families below the federal poverty threshold,† (www.nccp.org). Majority of these children will go to school hungry, which will affect their performance in school. The National School Lunch Program provides lunch to help feed them and keep them focus during the day. This program also benefits farmers and the economy by raisingRead MoreThe National School Lunch Program Essay1640 Words   |  7 Pagesresulting in school absences.† (Karger, p 371) It is important for children to meet their full potential in order for society to continue thriving into the future. If children are not receiving an adequate education because they have an empty stomach, then they will not continue to higher education or they will do poorly. In order to combat hunger in children the federal government responded with several major programs. Two of the programs the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the School BreakfastRead MoreThe National School Lunch Program Essay1928 Words   |  8 PagesThe National School Lunch Program (NSLP), originally initiated in 1946 under the name the National School Lunch Act, has served in excess of 224 billion school lunches to children throughout the United States since its inception (National School Lunch Program). The goals of the program include serving a school lunch that meets certain nutritional requirements and is available at low or no cost to eligible students (National School Lunch Program). While the program has undergone many changes overRead MoreThe Goals Of The National School Lunch Program Essay814 Words   |  4 Pages According to the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act, the goal of the National School Lunch Program is â€Å"to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation’s children and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food, by assisting the States in providing an adequate supply of foods and other facilities for the establishment, maintenance, operation, and expansion of nonprofit school lunch programs†.1 NASW Code of Ethics One of theRead MoreConsistency in the National School Lunch Program Essay2063 Words   |  9 PagesClaim The National School Lunch Program needs to standardize and regulate their set nutritional standards at all schools to help curb the growing prevalence of childhood obesity and other weight related diseases. What is the National School Lunch Program? â€Å"The National School Lunch Program, or NSLP, is a federally assisted meal program operating in over 101,000 public and non†profit private schools and residential childcare institutions.† (National school lunch, 2011) This government-run programRead MorePreventing Childhood Obesity And The National School Lunch Program865 Words   |  4 PagesAccording to the SNDA, only 35% of schools meet with the SMI recommended calories. However, the NSLP instead of recognizing that schools are not meeting with the recommended intake because of its overconsumption of commodities, they blame the students and the schools for the lack of healthful practices. For example, Allen and Guttmann (2002) in Neoliberalization from the ground up states how the introduction of the wellness policy under the NSLP recognizes that schools are faulty for nutritional goals