June 22, 2014
9:30am
Consultation at the 6th Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction
June 22-26, 2014
Bangkok, Thailand
http://6thamcdrr-thailand.net/6thamcdrr/
Objectives: Experience and studies have shown that faith based actors have extraordinary reach and unparalleled trust within many local communities across the world - including in hard-to-reach locations - and have the potential to be an important partner in promoting Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) at a grassroots level. However, the potential of local faith based organisations is sometimes under-valued, under-estimated and under-exploited by actors in the international DRR system. In the meantime, it is assumed that some faith based actors themselves remain unconscious of it. Therefore, more needs to be done to pro-actively include local faith based actors in international disaster management/DRR processes, so as to maximise their potential to influence and educate communities at a grass-roots level.
Bringing the rich experience from Caritas Asia network, Soka Gakkai International (SGI), and ACT Alliance, the proposed consultation meeting will aim to achieve the following:
- Share best practices, past experiences, and analysis on the role of faith based actors.
- Discuss how the strength of faith based actors can be maximized, and weaknesses are dealt with.
- Come up with joint statement on the role of faith based actors and recommendations for multiple stakeholders in the field of DRR.
The consultation will also seek out to other faith based networks/organizations, so that wide consultation takes place to enrich the discussion.
Contact from each Network/Organization
Caritas Asia: Mr. Zar Gomez asiacaritas@gmail.com
SGI: Mr. Nobuyuki Asai n-asai@soka.jp
ACT Alliance: Mr. Takeshi Komino takeshi@cwspa.org.pk