Building Holistic Disaster Risk Reduction Capacity in Cambodia

In partnership with Habitat for Humanity Australia, Habitat for Humanity Cambodia launched its first disaster risk reduction (DRR) capacity building project in February 2015.

The project will build the resilience of communities, private construction suppliers and government officials to cope during natural disasters. It aims to strengthen national and local mechanisms and capacities on DRR, and promote the Participatory Approach for Safe Shelter Awareness (PASSA) methodology at the community level. Community-based mechanisms will be promoted through this project, including procedures for mainstreaming community participation in DRR by integrating PASSA in three villages and three communes in Siem Reap through awareness raising, piloting DRR projects and sharing lessons-learned among DRR actors based on PASSA.

The project will work on three levels:  The national level through the support of the DRR Forum, the provincial and community level through a pilot program in Siem Reap, and the organizational level through the development of a formal HFH Cambodia DRR strategy. The new project will have 400 direct beneficiaries among government practitioners and NGO representatives, 20 Habitat for Humanity Cambodia staff and other partners.  Moreover, 27 community people and 100 families (500 people) in three villages will receive training on Construction Technical Assistance.

The community level part of the project will be implemented in Sambour Village, Sambour Commune, O-Kralanh Village, Kralanh Commune and Ta An Village, Ta An Commune in Kralanh District, Siem Reap Province.  Kralanh is one of the 12 districts in Siem Reap regularly affected by natural disasters.

“Habitat for Humanity Cambodia is confident that our growing involvement in Disaster Risk Reduction will contribute to supporting resilience in communities throughout Cambodia. This new project is a great opportunity for us to review what other actors have been doing and to work in partnership on the basis of the PASSA methodology, which needs to be adapted to the local context,” said Kif Nguyen, Habitat for Humanity Cambodia Country Director.

In early February, Habitat for Humanity Cambodia organized a kick-off workshop to review the deliverables, and monitoring and evaluation plan.