The frequency of disasters in the country has created a pertinent need for proactive and skilled humanitarian workers in the field. Climate change accelerated the intensity of natural hazards and pushed hundreds and thousands of people into abject poverty. As the nature and magnitude of the disasters are ever-evolving, so is the need for effective responses in different geographies.

To face this challenge, Caritas India works with the community and stakeholders at different levels to identify, prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural hazards.

Recently, Caritas India Global conducted a four-day technical training at Puri, Odisha, from February 21–24, 2023, for its program coordinators and animators from Assam, Bihar, West Bengal, and Odisha to upgrade their skills and improve their understanding of disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and resilience building.

The training complements the global program outcome of increasing disaster resilience by improving the disaster management system at the national, state, and local levels. It helped to develop a perspective on disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and resilience-building concepts and practical action to improve the quality of programming. It will help develop actions that can lead to enhanced communities’ resilience to natural hazards such as drought, floods, cyclones, heat waves, lightning, drought, earthquakes, etc.

Mr. Anjan Bag, thematic lead for humanitarian aid and disaster risk reduction at Caritas India, helped the team to refurbish their understanding of key humanitarian terminologies like hazards, disasters, risks, capacity, disaster risk reduction, survivability, etc. Participants were oriented on the Disaster Crunch model, which highlights disaster as the interface between natural hazards and vulnerable conditions. Mr. Bag gave a detailed explanation of factors affecting the intensity of disaster risk by sharing the formula of risk = hazards x vulnerability / capacity.

To explain the steps taken for risk reduction measures, Mr. Bag conducted a group exercise to arrange the sequential steps to conduct PDRA, which was further evaluated by the state and national teams of the Global Program. A role-playing exercise was used with the participants to understand climate change from community and expert perspectives. The participants were further grouped under DRR, WASH, HEALTH, LIVELIHOOD, and PROTECTION themes to understand the issue, and devise a solution through an appropriate strategy.

The participants collectively drafted the definition of ‘resilience’ as the ability of a community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate, adapt to, transform, and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions through risk management.

Under a group exercise, every partner organization visualized their project villages, came up with a current map and resilient village maps, and also developed strategies for making resilient villages. The team also built their understanding on sustainable development goals and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.

The last day was parked for the vision-building exercise to reflect on disaster-related issues and decide on strategies and activities for the next 4 years’ intervention.

“Global Program India has created good networks with the government and other relevant institutions, which need to be sustained in the days to come. We have more than 20 key recommendations from the mid-term evaluation, which need to be reflected and incorporated in our next level planning. We have invested enough in the micro level, hence the need to focus more on the meso and macro levels in the next phase,” said Fr. (Dr.) Jolly Puthenpura, Assistant Executive Director of Caritas India, while setting the context of the vision building exercise.

The team briefly discussed the role of community and PRI, partnership management, influencing SDMA and state government, strengthening district networks, and the role of the forum in resilience building.