The need and relevance of ESD in the local context

Question 1: What does the notion of ESD symbolize to you?

Reply: Sustainable development and disaster management are essential preconditions of each other. Natural disaster severely hinders the progress and achievements of sustainable development. While disasters can strike wide region or a nation, that impact is felt at the community level.

Being at the forefronts of disasters, communities need to have capacity to respond to threats themselves. It is for this reason that communities should be involved in managing the risks that may threaten their well-being. While different community empowerment programmes related to disaster mitigation and response have achieved their objectives, issues on sustainability and its methods in these efforts are rarely addressed.

This is due to the fact that the community, as recipient of the direct impact of implementation of activities with their own local context and cultural behaviour. In this pattern and trends of concerned community which the project will be based, it would need certain methodologies and perspectives on how the community would susutain an integrated self empowerment. And through these needs, ESD vision would be address as the project perspectives.

Interdisciplinary and holistic approach, Values-driven, multi-method, participatory decision-making, critical thinking and problem solving, are the features that used from ESD characteristic to achieve the goal of this projects.

Achieving ESD-Goals

Question 2: How would you plan to empower the targeted individuals and communities to help create a more sustainable future beyond addressing immediate needs and challenges of the beneficiary?

Reply: Sustainability requires a community that aware of the goals of a sustainable society, and has the knowledge and skills to contribute to those goals.

Community disaster preparedness and mitigation provides opportunities for the integration of disaster management into the local development planning processes and systems. This means, empowered community that resilient to disaster threat would be the base for sustainable society.

To ensure the targeted individuals and community get benefits from the implemented projects, without compromising the sustainability value for the future generation, this project need to be approached from multidisciplinary perspectives. As the need of some key factors that would lead in to achieving this goals to be planned.
These key factors would be:

a. The existence of “culture of coping with crisis” and “culture of disaster reduction” should be initiated.

b. Risk assessment process involves participation of people and incorporating their perception of vulnerability and capacity.

c. Community and supporting agencies share common motivation and ownership for the initiation and sustainability of the projects.

d. Genuine people’s participation within capacity building objectives, with specific focus on sectoral groups like women, elderly, children and ethnic minorities.

e. Well-delivered educational inputs in accordance with the objectives of the project and the needs of the community for certain training.

f. Wider stakeholders involvement and participation.

g. Accumulation of physical, technological and economic assets to reduce hazards and vulnerability.

h. Integration of these projects into regular development planning and budgeting to ensure sustainability.