Grassroots participatory disaster management course

Background

Disaster management plans must adopt a participatory strategy with an increasing focus on the grassroots level. Small initiatives, such as creating awareness and educating vulnerable communities on simple and easy disaster management techniques, may mitigate the conditions that exacerbate disasters and help reduce losses.

“If sufficient a number of management layers are superimposed on top of each other, it can be assured that disaster is not left to chance.” -Norman R. Augustine

The occurrence of disasters appears to be on the rise, and despite several technological advancements, they still cause major damage and destruction to our societies. In order to minimize these damages and save lives, disaster management plans must adopt a participatory strategy with an increasing focus on the grassroots level. Small initiatives, such as creating awareness and educating vulnerable communities on simple and easy disaster management techniques, may mitigate the conditions that exacerbate disasters and help reduce losses.

Therefore, there is a need for a participatory and broad-based approach in order to increase the scope of disaster management and utilize local knowledge and means of communication and organization. Instead of looking at crises from the delivery end as outsiders, we need to focus on understanding the requirements of the sufferer, the victim, the community and design disaster management plans accordingly.

Course

The course mainly focuses on victim-centric, micro-level planning in disaster management and predominantly discusses the techniques that are useful at the individual/family/community level. It focuses on actions to be taken during and after the occurrence of disasters, rather than focusing on the mitigation.