Informed Prepared Together: Phase II

 

The Informed Prepared Together

community-based resilience exercise in Poland

Europe is increasingly impacted by emergencies and disasters. Since 1990, the Emergency Disasters Data Base has recorded 1483 disaster events in Europe, which affected over 42 million people, caused over 98,000 deaths and losses of US$ 168 billion. With the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes prediction that extreme weather events are going to become more frequent and severe as a result of climate change, the situation is only going to get worse.

Working together and combining our expertise, resources and networks in Europe, the Red Cross / EU Office, in partnership with the Polish Red Cross, AVIVA Europe and AVIVA Poland, are committed to inform, prepare, build and improve  individual and community resilience.

Project aim

Work together to build individual and community resilience in a community in Poland through the Informed. Prepared. Together. (I.P.T.) community resilience exercise and campaign, with the aim of informing, preparing and working together to build resilience and limit the impact of an emergency or disaster on the communitys lives.

The community-based emergency exercise

The exercise will aim to draw together key members of the local community. The purpose of the one-day exercise will be to help the community to recognise the risks that they may face and for them to be better informed and prepared, with the overall aim of helping them to limit the damage and impact of an emergency on their lives. The group will be taken through an emergency simulation exercise and assisted to develop a response and preparedness plan. The overall outcome will be the creation of a community-owned emergency plan, which harnesses the interest and resources of local people to increase their resilience to emergencies. The Informed. Prepared. Together. family of products and tools will be made available to the participants during and following the one-day exercise to assist them with their personal planning and preparedness.

Project objectives

• Enable Polish citizens and communities to be better informed, prepared and more self-reliant in planning for and during emergencies with the overall aim of limiting the impact of a major incident on peoples lives, their homes and the community at large.
• Take forward the work developed by the EC-funded project Informed Prepared Together and develop a good practice model for building resilience.
• Engage key European stakeholders in a strategic and timely community resilience initiative.
• Demonstrate this is a successful way to build resilience and disaster preparedness in European communities
• Raise awareness of project and importance of building resilience