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Assess and strengthen sustainability by engaging neighborhood networks
Start: April 1, 2016
End: March 31, 2018
Partners : Austrian Red Cross, Bulgarian Red Cross, German Red Cross, French Red Cross, Croatian Red Cross and ISIS Gmbh - Germany.
Challenges addressed by the project:
1. People as consumers: In many European countries, citizens believe that only rescue services are responsible for disaster response and often do not understand how important they themselves are in disaster preparedness and response. People usually do not like to be judged, so it is difficult to judge how prepared they are for dangerous events. It is difficult to attract their interest to events organized to inform them and prepare them for disasters. In the most common case, people begin to pay attention to disaster preparedness and express a desire to engage in training after something bad has already happened.
2. Helping the social cohesion of people in urban areas: In order to reduce the consequences of possible disasters, it is important to support social cohesion, strengthen social ties and trust between people. Urban migration and alienation, along with demographic change, reduce the role of traditional social networks for mutual assistance, and this further hampers resilience to urban disasters.
3. Missed target group in disaster preparedness: Existing ways of stimulating disaster preparedness and informing the population are tailored to the individual or cover entire communities, but are rarely targeted at households or people living in a neighborhood.
What will we do about the project?
We will develop a tool called "ReCheck", which will assess the disaster preparedness of individuals and groups in a structured way. This will be done in an interactive question and answer process between evaluators (experienced volunteers) and citizens (household, neighbors, interest groups). An electronic ReCheck tool installed on a tablet will be used in the process. For each different target group (household, neighbors, interest groups), there will be a different type of activity, called a "ReCheck event", tailored to the type of group, the urban environment and the cultural characteristics of the region.
The tools will include sustainability assessment, practical advice on how to improve one's resilience to disasters and how to improve the readiness of neighborhood networks.
Expected results:
1. ReCheck tool (questionnaire and tablet application).
2. Training program for evaluators who will implement the ReCheck tool.
3. Different types of ReCheck events for specific groups and different environments, with practical tips for improving resilience.
4. These three components will be tested by the partners, who will conduct pilot REcheck events in several cities in the 5 partner countries.
