THE Caribbean Community Resilience to Disaster Risk (CCRDR) Regional Steering Committee meeting was held in Guyana from 12-14 January, 2012. The Guyana Red Cross Society (GRSC) continues to address issues of disaster risk reduction by hosting that meeting. Red Cross partners from Dominica, Jamaica, and Canada, and from the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies, the Red Cross DRM Resource Center in Barbados, and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), met to review work done during the first eight months of the project, and approve the second-year work plan and budget.
The CCRDR project endeavours to impact disaster risk reduction (DRR) programming at regional, state and community levels.
At the regional level, the project will research the targeting mechanisms used by Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) and civil society organizations, and recommend an approach that can be standardized and piloted to determine vulnerable communities.
In addition, the project will contribute to, and advance, a key regional priority: to overcome a lack of consolidated Caribbean Basin Disaster Risk Reduction (CBDRR) knowledge available to both government agencies and civil society organizations through the establishment of a Caribbean Disaster Risk Management Resource Centre in Barbados.

Guyana’s Efforts
According to a Guyana Red Cross Society (GRCS) representative, the entity began implementing community disaster risk reduction activities in five communities in Regions Five (Mahaica/Berbice) and Six (East Berbice /Corentyne), in areas including Broken Water Land, Strath-Campbell-Chance, Perth, Mara and Barakara.
Alluding to the selection criteria, the Red Cross representative said, “These communities were selected using a community selection tool which rated various indicators of vulnerability, in collaboration with the Civil Defence Commission and the Ministry of Local Government.”
Activities in these areas include facilitating vulnerability and capacity assessments (VCAs), training of community disaster response teams, facilitating the development of community (linked to regional and national) and family disaster preparedness and response plans, and implementing a community risk reduction micro-project.
A key characteristic of this project is the implementation of a monitoring and evaluation tool to assess the level of impact of the activities on the community. This tool has been developed in collaboration with the Johns-Hopkins University.
Partners at this meeting also observed a simulation exercise carried out in the community of Mara, located on the eastern bank of the Berbice River, where residents have recently completed the community disaster response team training, and used the simulation to test their knowledge and capacity to respond within their own community.
At the state and community levels, the Red Cross National Societies (Dominica, Jamaica and Guyana) will continue to collaborate with national disaster management agencies (NDMAs) and other partners in the implementation of the community activities.