At the front of the room in the small village of Hindangin Leyte that was hit by the Philippines Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013, Jesselyn Perocho is facilitating a session on disability rights. For many participants, it is the first time they have learnt about their rights as persons with disabilities. Workshop participants are being mentored to become community resilience actors to strengthen the inclusion of persons with disabilities and community resilience post-Typhoon Haiyan.
Already this project is showing impact. One participant successfully lobbied her local level government (barangay) to allocate a budget for persons with disabilities. This was after learning more about national policy that supports such budget allocations. This project, implemented by Philippine organisation the Foundation of These-Abled Persons (FTI), is one of six projects that Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (ASB), with funds from Aktion Deutschland Hilft (ADH), is supporting under the Philippines Community Resilience Programme.
After Typhoon Haiyan, the Philippines National Council for Disability Affairs found that people most at risk, including persons with disabilities, were often not included in disaster preparedness or recovery efforts. ASB believes that a community is only resilient to risk and disasters if everybody in the community, including those most at risk, are included. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 also recognises the important role that all people must play in preparedness, response and recovery. In response to this, and as part of the Typhoon Haiyan recovery process, the ASB Philippines Community Resilience Programme aims to strengthen the resilience of communities, including most at risk community members, affected by Typhoon Haiyan. The programme is implemented by local partners and aims to increase inclusive disaster risk reduction practice.
ASB partners in the Philippines are also working with local organisations, communities and with government to ensure efforts to Build-Back-Better after Haiyan are inclusive. Partner Alternatives to Development (A2D), an organisation based in Cebu, is working with communities to build disability-inclusive community based disaster risk management (DI-CBDRM) using the Purok system. The Purok system is a local system of community self-organization at the sub-village level. The Purok system was recognised by the United Nations Sasakawa Award for Disaster Reduction in 2011.
On October 17th, 2015 the A2D project also launched the Cebu Provincial Disability Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction (DIDRR) Network. The network, made up of disabled person’s organisations, civil society organisations and government, including the Cebu Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office, provides an important platform to ensure disability perspectives are included in provincial disaster risk reduction and development efforts.
This work, along with the work of other partners that ASB and ADH are supporting in the Philippines, is helping to Build-Back-Better after Typhoon Haiyan by strengthening community resilience that is inclusive of all. (Annie Sloman)
