Page 8 - Creating Resilience in Communities-Success Stories 24 Jan 22.indd

The problem Bhagwanpura is a congested, unregulated settlement in Samaypur Badli, New Delhi. The people here not only lacked awareness on prevention or mitigation of disasters but also increased their vulnerability to disasters through their risky practices. Earlier, people thought that disasters just happened and they had no agency in either preventing or preparing for them. You never heard of any discussions about what we as a community could do to reduce the impact of a disaster. We were so unaware that we would even hang wet clothes on open/naked electric wires. – Bharti, 18-year-old Task Force member The action The Task Force was on the ground when the pandemic-induced wage losses led to food Save the Children set up a Task Force of 25 boys shortages and hunger in the area. Following and girls for disaster preparedness. The Task all COVID-19 protocols, and led by Bharti and Force was trained on awareness generation, Vandana, they went into the community to identify disaster management, prevention and mitigation the most vulnerable families. As a result, Save the strategies. Although the 2020 lockdown made Children provided 116 education kits and 70 food face-to-face interactions impossible, Save the and hygiene kits for these families. Children continued to provide training and Bharti and Vandana, along with other children guidance via telephone calls to the Task Force from the Task Force, conducted household-level members. meetings in their community and facilitated 6 Creating Resilience in Communities and Schools - Success Stories