In the com­ing eigh­teen months some 80 vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties through­out the Caribbean will ben­e­fit from train­ing and out­reach ac­tiv­i­ties as part of the lat­est Caribbean Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Pro­gramme co­or­di­nat­ed by the Caribbean Re­gion­al Of­fice of the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of the Red Cross and Red Cres­cent So­ci­eties (IFRC). Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers will par­tic­i­pate in a wide range of dis­as­ter fo­cused ac­tiv­i­ties such as first aid train­ing, ba­sic search and res­cue, dam­age as­sess­ment and even how to pro­vide psy­choso­cial sup­port dur­ing times of ex­treme stress in a dis­as­ter.

Vol­canic erup­tions, earth­quakes, hur­ri­canes and flood­ing are all very re­al as­pects of our Caribbean re­al­i­ty. As Red Cross Na­tion­al So­ci­eties across the Caribbean com­mem­o­rate the UN In­ter­na­tion­al Day for Risk Re­duc­tion, more in­ten­sive at­ten­tion is be­ing placed on those com­mu­ni­ties that are in­creas­ing­ly af­fect­ed by the ef­fects of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. In recog­ni­tion of grow­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal threats, greater ef­forts are be­ing made by Na­tion­al So­ci­eties and the Caribbean Re­gion­al Of­fice to source fi­nan­cial sup­port for pro­grammes of this kind. Im­ple­ment­ed by the Red Cross in each coun­try, and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with lo­cal dis­as­ter man­age­ment agen­cies across the re­gion, this very rel­e­vant out­reach ef­fort is be­ing made pos­si­ble through the fi­nan­cial sup­port of glob­al con­trib­u­tors.

These in­clude the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment (Cana­di­an In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Agency) and the Cana­di­an Red Cross, the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment's Of­fice of For­eign Dis­as­ter As­sis­tance and the Amer­i­can Red Cross, the Japan­ese Red Cross and the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion through its hu­man­i­tar­i­an arm, the Eu­ro­pean Com­mu­ni­ty Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Of­fice. The IFRC has al­so been able to se­cure ad­di­tion­al sup­port for Caribbean com­mu­ni­ties from the Finnish Red Cross, the French Red Cross and the Dutch Red Cross.

Ben­e­fi­cia­ry coun­tries in­clude the en­tire Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, in­clud­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Ja­maica, Do­mini­ca, Guyana, Saint Lu­cia, Be­lize, Suri­name, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Grena­da, Be­lize, St Kitts and Nevis, and The Ba­hamas. As a re­sult of this com­pre­hen­sive re­gion­al ef­fort, vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties will be bet­ter able to re­spond to dis­as­ters by un­der­stand­ing their spe­cif­ic risks, en­sur­ing that they are con­fi­dent in pro­vid­ing prac­ti­cal sup­port dur­ing an emer­gency, and pro­vid­ing a re­sponse for their fel­low cit­i­zens, even in the most dif­fi­cult of times.