Strengthening the Preparedness Capacity of Local Civil Society Organizations for Effective Emergency Response: Workshop on Disaster Management

Local non-governmental organizations (LNGOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs) play an important role in disaster management in Sri Lanka especially in disaster response and relief services at the local level. However, most of the time these organizations struggle to deliver better services due to possession of limited capacities in terms of human, financial, knowledge, and technical capacities. Lack of collaborative and coordinated effort has also become a bottleneck for them to contribute to the disaster management, preparedness, relief, and response processes. Having understood the importance of the role of these organizations in locally-led disaster preparedness for emergency response, Sri Lanka Preparedness Partnership (SLPP) has stepped into several initiatives to strengthen the capacity of local NGOs/CSOs. Building their technical capacity in different preparedness, relief, and response aspects are one of the key such interventions of SLPP. The purpose of this workshop on disaster risk reduction and management is to develop the technical capacity of LNGOs and CSOs on disaster risk reduction and management. This will assist them to provide a better service for the local vulnerable communities for disaster prevention and mitigation. And also to scale up the partnerships at the local level.

The other key objectives include:

• To enhance the technical knowledge and skills of LNGOs/CSOs on disaster Management particularly the response aspect.
• Linking up the respective LNGOs/CSOs with  Disaster Management Centre for enabling better coordination before, during, and after disaster situations