Training Capacity Building

After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, residents of North Rokko used the participatory Machizukuri model to create alternative reconstruction plans, forming neighbourhood associations that strengthened community resilience and civic engagement.

Structured collaboration among stakeholders to enhance community resilience

A city programme in Cali, Colombia, that trains residents living beside the Cauca River flood dike to look after it and raise awareness among their neighbours. Called Guardianes del Jarillón, it is the community-governance line of the Plan Jarillón, the programme that is reinforcing the 26.1 km dike and resettling the 8,777 households that lived on it after the 2010–2011 floods.

A five-step method for building flood early warning systems with local communities, municipalities and national weather and civil defence services in the Andes.

It was developed by CIIFEN, the International Research Centre on El Niño, under the regional programme PRASDES, which Finland’s foreign ministry financed. It joins the four components of early warning set out by the UN disaster-reduction office to an approach of the Organization of American States in which trained community volunteers operate simple rain and river-level instruments. 

In 2015-2016, residents of 19 communities in Escoma, Bolivia, mapped flood-prone areas with the municipality to build a local flood early warning system.

A community flood early warning system was built in Querecotillo, Peru, in 2016, with residents mapping flood zones and rehearsing an evacuation drill. CIIFEN worked with the municipality, the civil defence institute INDECI and the weather service SENAMHI between January and September 2016.

The Zambia Red Cross acted on a flood forecast in January 2023 to warn and equip households in Kitwe and Kafue before the water arrived.

In November 2023, communities in Butaleja and Mbale, Uganda, dug drainage ditches and reinforced flood barriers before forecast floods, supported by the Uganda Red Cross Society.

Before the 2024/25 drought season, farmers in Mbire, Zimbabwe, helped plan and build water and livestock protection measures with Welthungerhilfe and its local partner.

The initiative combines participatory resilience assessment, university technical support and community engagement. A December 2023 Scorecard workshop identified data-management needs, leading the municipality and university to establish a dedicated data-collection portal.