By Charminae George
Representatives from a number of local organisations to include the Ministry of Health, Antigua Public Utilities Authority(APUA) and the Salvation Army have begun training in Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) methodology at the Multipurpose Cultural Centre.
The four-day session, which is facilitated by trainers from various disaster and development agencies, will seek to equip participants with the knowledge to prepare, respond, mitigate, and recover from natural disasters.
“In a nutshell, it is a standardised way of assessing the damage and loss to come up with your recovery cost, so that you can leverage international financing,” United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) representative, Elizabeth Charles-Soomer told Observer.
This workshop will in turn benefit the general public because it will significantly aid disaster recovery efforts.
“It will help [residents] because it will enable the government to have a programme that can be financed so that their lives can be brought back to normal in a better way,” she stated.
In a short ceremony held before the training, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management (CDEMA) representative Dr Deborah Brown spoke of the workshop’s importance to CDEMA’s mission.
“This workshop forms a key plan of CDEMA’s strategic objective 2022-2027 and it’s thrust to accelerate recovery capacity building in the region,” she said.
The event also had brief comments from the Director of NODS, Sherrod James, Senator Rawdon Turner on behalf of the Ministry of Social Transformation, and a European Union representative.
The PDNA methodology training session is a collaboration between the UNDP, CDEMA, National Office of Disaster Services (NODS), Enabling Gender-Responsive Disaster Recovery, Climate and Environmental Resilience in the Caribbean (EnGenDER), and Global Affairs Canada.