The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID-OFDA), is organizing a national conference on disaster risk reduction with the theme “Food and Nutrition Security and Disaster Risk Reduction: Global Agenda for Local Action.”
The three-day conference begins on October 13, coinciding with the UN-declared International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction. With more than 200 expected participants and speakers from various stakeholders, the conference aims to bring the global disaster risk reduction dialogue during the 3rd UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction last March 2015 into the local context.
Since 2011, WFP and USAID-OFDA, with the help from national agencies and local government units, have been building resilience in 10 provinces, 40 municipalities and 7 cities, and worked with 9 academic institutions and 11 non-government organisations to provide high-impact, innovative community-based projects.
This year, USAID-OFDA provided additional funding of US$4.3M to scale up the disaster risk reduction projects in targeted communities until 2017.