Ribadesella Community Resilience in Spain
The Civil Protection Volunteer Association of Ribadesella conducts workshops for community resilience and protection to enhance preparedness and response before, during and after disasters
Description
Protección Civil de Ribadesella is a civil protection volunteer association that aims to improve community resilience in Ribadesella and other neighbouring localities in collaboration with the municipal administration of Ribadesella.
Civil protection is the management of a country's emergency services, extended to all levels, and involving all parties. At the local level, Protección Civil de Ribadesella, supports the city council of Ribadesella in protecting citizens against catastrophes of any kind, whether human or natural origin. The association is prepared to act in the face of emergencies and to organize citizen aid when disaster strikes. All individuals who are willing to contribute to the activities of civil protection can be part of the association.
Through this commitment, the association will raise awareness about natural hazards and disasters among their citizens and will enhance their preparedness and response before, during and after the occurrence of hazards. This will be done through trainings conducted with neighborhood associations through which community leaders can be identified and trained.
In Spain, neighborhood associations are the nuclear entity of dissemination in small towns, which, far from the main emergency systems, require an additional effort in their protection and preparedness in order to be less vulnerable. The inclusion of the greatest number of associations, and therefore of towns, will allow us to reach the greatest possible number of people directly.
Did the Sendai Framework change or contribute to changes in your activities/organization? If so, how?
The Sendai Framework is for us, an ideal framework to apply to the risk of small-scale, frequent and infrequent, sudden and slow-onset disasters, caused by natural or manmade hazards as well, in tune with our local goals as related environmental, technological and biological hazards and risks.
It aims to guide the multi-hazard management of disaster risk in
development at all levels as well as within and across all sectors
What led you to make this commitment/initiative?
What was your position before making this Voluntary Commitment / prior to the Sendai Framework?
We took this initiative after understanding the need to bring updated information on self-protection against disasters to local environments.
The council of Ribadesella is a coastal territory, subject to the inclemencies of the Cantabrian Sea, it is also bathed by the Sella river, large forest areas, rural areas far from emergency services, an industrial area, an important highway and railway. All these elements, incorporate different threats into our environment, the level of risk of which will depend largely on the vulnerability of our population.
Improving the capacities of our population, reducing their vulnerability, will help us improve the resilience of our community after any event that may inflict damage on our infrastructure and population.
Deliverables and Progress report
Deliverables
Deliverables are the end-products of the initiative/commitment, which can include issuance of publications or knowledge products, outcomes of workshops, training programs, videos, links, photographs, etc.
Through a cycle of talks focused on the different aspects of self-protection and vulnerability reduction, we intend to improve the response capacity of our small communities while they wait for the arrival of emergency services.
Organizations and focal points
Implementing Organization(s)
Focal points
