The Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency’s Co­or­di­nat­ing Unit (CDE­MA CU) says its Tar­get­ed Sup­port to CDE­MA Project (TSCP) is be­ing ex­tend­ed by a year.

The project is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed with fi­nan­cial sup­port from Glob­al Af­fairs Cana­da and has been grant­ed a one-year no-cost ex­ten­sion un­til De­cem­ber 31, this year.

The TSCP be­gan in March 2019 with eight mil­lion Cana­di­an dol­lars (One CAD$=US$0.74 cents) in fund­ing from the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment.

The project’s pri­ma­ry goal is the im­prove­ment of Com­pre­hen­sive Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment (CDM) in the Caribbean re­gion with a fo­cus on vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly women and girls.

It al­so sup­ports the CDE­MA sys­tem and its par­tic­i­pat­ing states, in sev­er­al ways, in­clud­ing the CDE­MA CU pro­gram­ming and sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ty re­cov­ery for the most vul­ner­a­ble through the Caribbean Ear­ly Re­cov­ery Fund (CERF).

CDE­MA said that the CERF has been cru­cial in fund­ing projects to sup­port re­cov­ery af­ter im­pact, in Be­lize, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, St.Lu­cia and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.

CDE­MA deputy ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Lt. Col. Kester Craig thanked Glob­al Af­fairs Cana­da for its con­tin­ued com­mit­ment and sup­port.

“The Tar­get­ed Sup­port to CDE­MA Project has been in­stru­men­tal in the ex­e­cu­tion of CDE­MA’s man­date, by strength­en­ing the Re­gion­al Re­sponse Mech­a­nism and the in­ter­nal ca­pac­i­ty of CDE­MA both in hu­man re­sources and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ef­forts. Through the chal­lenges, great strides have been made and will con­tin­ue with the wel­comed project ex­ten­sion.” Lt. Col Craig ex­plained.

It said that the on­set of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the 2021 ex­plo­sive erup­tion of the La Soufriere vol­cano in St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines were among the chal­lenges to project de­liv­ery, which con­verse­ly showed the need to sup­port re­mote work and re­cov­ery ef­forts of lo­cal projects af­ter im­pact.

Head of Co­op­er­a­tion at Glob­al Af­fairs Cana­da, Abebech As­se­fa ac­knowl­edged these chal­lenges in grant­i­ng the ex­ten­sion say­ing Cana­da rec­og­nizes the un­prece­dent­ed lev­el of im­pacts that the re­gion has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in 2020 and 2021.

“CDE­MA has been called in­to ac­tion for more fre­quent and longer pe­ri­ods of time and so Cana­da is hap­py to ap­prove this ex­ten­sion so that the im­por­tant ini­tia­tives un­der the TSCP can be com­plet­ed.”

CDE­MA said that the CU has been able to ac­cel­er­ate im­ple­men­ta­tion to re­alise project re­sults in­clud­ing re­cruit­ing and staffing nine tech­ni­cal po­si­tions which have en­hanced the CU’s ca­pac­i­ty, host­ing two im­por­tant re­gion­al search and res­cue train­ings.

In ad­di­tion, the project sup­port­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of a tem­po­rary In­te­grat­ed Re­gion­al Lo­gis­tics Hub in 2020 for the COVID-19 re­sponse, im­ple­ment­ed and es­tab­lished an e-learn­ing plat­form and sup­port­ed the build-out of the CDE­MA’s Records and In­for­ma­tion Man­age­ment Sys­tem.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos, Mar 13, CMC – 

CMC/gh/ir/2024