A fire, hurricane, flood or any such disasters are terrifying and then there is the aftermath which is just devastating and life altering especially for those who lose everything they have worked all their life for. Well, NEMO along with its partners hosted what is called a "Social Protection Response in Emergencies" conference at the Biltmore. The focus is to have a synchronized and prolonged post disasters response plan for those in need.
Shelton Defour, National Coordinator, NEMO
"This is about social protection system how do they cope in times of disaster of post impact phase so that the most affected population could get the resources they need and now for NEMO we understand clearly what are some of the challenges these systems will face."
Reporter:
"Talk to us about that the challenges it would face."
Shelton Defour
"One of the challenges is that you have to do standardized assessment so that we are not tripping over ourselves and duplicating effort and giving the same persons who are affected, like double dipping, Red Cross would give assistance, NEMO give assistance, the Ministry of Human Development give assistance so we have to standardize our system and have a good database if you wish of those populations, those people we know are very vulnerable that will be needing assistance so we can then identify how do we share up this task or responsibility, who gets whatever village to go into or which part of the city etc. so we want to make sure duplication of efforts is reduced to the minimum."
"You are talking about how do people cope beyond a disaster after NEMO provides immediate relief. We will be out there for the food and water, the table top stove, bedding and the likes but then you have the need for cash injection into the household so the kids can go to school or families can buy and pay for the basic needs and these types of social protection system offer that relief and it is beyond the NEMO operation but it is correlated because if we see where certain gaps and we can participate in terms of storing some of the things they would use and to make sure that they have the database of the names after the damage assessment to know exactly who qualify to get the assistance so it is all interrelated so it is nothing knew we are doing we are just deeper in our operation system to ensure that we have a more measured and effective medium and a longer term approach to get people to recover."
The conference concluded today.
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