Engaging with community members, 450 Youth Volunteers in Myanmar assess disaster risks, discussing the need for activities at the local level to raise awareness on Disaster Risk Reduction and increase their communities’ knowledge and skills on this subject.
The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme in Myanmar, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), runs a Disaster Risk Reduction Youth Volunteer (DRRYV) project in support of the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement.
The project strengthens community resilience to disasters through an institutionalized network of skilled and equipped youth volunteers. Engaging with community members, the youth volunteers assess disaster risks, and have identified fire, flood and cyclone as the main hazards to which their communities are vulnerable.
The 450 DRR Youth Volunteers trained by the pilot project have become agents of change in their own families and communities. They apply and share their Disaster Risk Reduction knowledge to help everyone but especially those who need it the most – women, children, the elderly, people with disabilities and people living with illness.
This story is published as part of the campaign for International Volunteer Day 2017: Volunteers Act First. Here. Everywhere.