Strengthening Community Resilience & Women and Girls Protection Through Integrated Disaster Preparedness (Goal 4) and Violence Mitigation (Goal 3) in the Western Area of Sierra Leone
Name of activity: Disaster Preparedness Emergency Planning TrainingDate: 16th July, 2024Time: 10:00 amVenue: St. Anthony’s Parish Hall, Syke Street, FreetownDuration of activity: (5 hours) Caritas Freetown, with funding from Trocair, organized Stakeholders Disaster Preparedness Emergency Planning Training on the Project Title: “Strengthening Community Resilience & Women and Girls Protection Through Integrated Disaster Preparedness (Goal 4) and Violence Mitigation (Goal 3) in the Western Area of Sierra Leone”The training particularly looked at goal 4 which is the Integrated Disaster preparedness and mitigation in the Western Area and it aimed at training and preparing stakeholders from five various communities about disaster preparedness and Emergency planning. The various communities targeted where Portee Community, Wellington Old Whaf Community, Lakka Community, Number 2 River Community and Gloucester Community. There were two facilitators ; Mr. Mohammed Sahid Conteh, CDMC Sierra Leone National Administrative Secretary General from Community Disaster Management Committee (CDMC) and Mr. Idriss Gibson Mansaray from Caritas Freetown. They were able conclude presentation on the following Topics : Problem Tree on Disaster Risk Response (DDR), what is an Action Plan?, Brainstorming/ Analysis, Transforming PT, Plan (CMI) Types of Volunteer in Development,Basic Disaster Risk Reduction Terminologies, Transact work and Analysis, Community Hazard/Risk Assessment, Community hazard/Risk Map Drawing. During the training, participants were placed in various groups and make them gathered around a flip chart distributed to each group for some group work and exercises, after which a presentation was done by each group making the sessions lively and interactive.
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Feedback Complaint and Response Mechanism (FCRM) Department, conducted a two-day popularization session in partnership with Caritas Freetown’s staff in the Youth in Politics and Peace Building Project
On the 23rd and 24th July, 2024, Ms Kharty and Ms Gabriella who are Technical staff from the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Feedback Complaint and Response Mechanism (FCRM) Department, conducted a two-day popularization session in partnership with Caritas Freetown’s staff in the Youth in Politics and Peace Building Project. Four (4) project communities; 2 in the Western Rural and another 2 in the Western Urban Area Districts. The purpose of the popularisation of the FCRM was to ensure that the FCRM short code, 535, which is available on all Mobile Networks, would be widely promoted and utilized by the project participants and partners. The initiative aimed to enhance the overall quality of Caritas Freetown’s projects and also address the concerns and feedback from project participants on a timely and effective manner. The session targeted a total of four communities: Lakka and Kossoh Town in the Western Area Rural , as well as Brookfields and Kissy Communities in the Western Area Urban. The session in each of the communities were attended by 40 participants, reaching out to a total of 125 (22 male 101 of female) in attendance, including Persons With Disabilities (2 PWDs), who were educated on the purpose and use of the FCRM shortcode. The Safeguarding session, facilitated by CRS ‘s Technical Staff, Ms. Kharty and Gabriella provided an invaluable opportunity to empower the project participants and stakeholders with knowledge about and importance of setting up the FCRM system. Such initiative is meant to improve project quality and address project participants’ concerns or complaints more effectively; ultimately leading to a highly positive impact on the communities/groups that we serve. The FCRM short code, 535, is a critical tool for our project participants and partners to directly provide feedbacks, concerns, or complaints directly to the CRS data portal. Lastly, it was stated the the transparent and accessible mechanism will ensure that the voices of the project participants or community members are heard and addressed on time, strengthening accountability and moreover, prompt response to complaints be it sensitive or non-sensitive. On the whole, the popularisation of the FCRM in those communities was successful.