Regional

Established as a multi-stakeholder regional partnership under the program ‘Strengthening Capacity of Government, Local Humanitarian Organizations and the Private Sector on Preparedness for Response in Asia’, Asian Preparedness Partnership strives to improve inter-organizational coordination and dialogue between Government, Local Humanitarian Organizations and Private Sector to enhance capacities through partnerships, knowledge resources, training and networking opportunities.  

Principally, the Roadmap document serves as a means of:

• Collating and clarifying priority areas for enhancing the disaster preparedness and coping capacities of SMEs in the Philippines

• Identifying the relevant actors, stakeholders or policy owners for addressing these issues

• Outlining potential approaches or pilot initiatives for tackling the identified challenges

 A disaster-resilient enterprise is one that has the capacity to anticipate, resist or absorb, and then accommodate or recover from a hazard that affects it, returning to at least the equivalent state of economic health that it enjoyed beforehand, and continuing to grow and develop without detrimental long-term effects.

Disaster occurrences cause losses and disruption in business operations among small and medium enterprises. The iPrepare Business facility intends to address this through the Strengthening the Disaster Resilience of Small and Medium Enterprises in Asia Project. One of the activities under the project is conducting of a survey among SMEs to understand the state of their disaster resilience, including capacity gaps and needs. Specifically, the survey covered questions risk exposure, experiences from previous disaster, Business Continuity Plan adoption, incentives and training needs.

In 2015, the iPrepare Business facility began working with country partners in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam to implement a regional project on “Strengthening the Disaster Resilience of Small and Medium Enterprises in Asia.” The project aimed to build disaster-resilient enterprises by: 

1. identifying actions to strengthen resilience of SMEs;

2. providing technical assistance in strengthening resilience to selected SMEs on a demand-driven basis;