FACES OF CHANGE

Community Based Disaster Risk Reduction (CBDRR) is a project of the Aga Khan Foundation U.S.A. (AKF USA) and Focus Humanitarian Assistance (FOCUS) funded by the United Sates Agency for International Development, Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA). It is currently taking place in the Badakhshan and Baghlan provinces in northern Afghanistan. The project enables local communities and authorities to prepare for, respond to and recover from shocks that are caused by natural disasters.

Reducing Risk with a “Can Do” Attitude

To encourage ongoing community participation in the project, Focus Humanitarian Assistance (FOCUS) holds contact meetings with each community involved. At these meetings, the project’s goals and activities are shared with village leaders, elders, Community Development Council (CDC) members, andother interested community members. To ensure that women and children are part of the long-term process, FOCUS staff makes sure that women and children are active participants in the contact meetings.

Organizing contact meetings in each village helps tremendously in improving community ownership.  It helps gives residents that “can do” confidence as they learn “how to’s.”

Mohammad Hassan is head of the Community Development Council in Kuzgut Village of Wakhan District, nestled in the extreme northeast of Afghanistan. It is a very isolated region. He, along with many other villagers, participated in a Natural Disaster Risk Reduction workshop delivered by FOCUS. Mohammad was very pleased to take part and commented “the theatre show at the workshop had very useful messages for increasing our community’s awareness. It was like a bolt of understanding flashed as we learned about preparing for disasters. We are quite confident now that if a disaster happens, we are able to cope with it and reduce its risks.”

Mohammad further explained how the workshop helped to change misunderstandings. “In the past, our grandfathers did not plant trees because they believed that the village was too cold. They figured there was no point in planting trees. But, today, we learned from the show that planting trees on hillsides can reduce the risk of landslides. Besides that, it gives more beauty and greenness to the environment.” So the people of Kuzgut are now very enthusiastic about planting and caring for trees every year as they take part in a range of disaster risk reduction activities.

Community Emergency and Response Team members to the Rescue

Close to Andaj Village in Ishkashim District in the north of Afghanistan, there was a bad car accident. A car slipped off the road and rolled down the bank into the river. The car became lodged in the river. The first people on the scene were confused and could not figure out what to do. So they sent word to the village to get the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) – local residents trained by Focus Humanitarian Assistance to be prepared for reducing risk and coping with disasters. Female and male CERT members used crowbars and rope (tools provided by the project) to lift the car from the water. Then they carefully removed two injured people. They attended to them with first aid treatment on the spot, lit a fire to keep them warm and wrapped them in dry clothes. When they felt strong enough to make the climb, the CERT members helped them up the bank to safety. Unfortunately, three others in the car were dead. Team members brought the bodies up the bank to the village using their stretchers. Team members comforted the survivors and sent for an ambulance. In this incident, the CERT members’ first aid skills and appropriate tools reached beyond their original purpose to the rescue the injured motorists in their hour of need.

Benefits of Learning First Aid

Ashur Beka, a 25-year-old housewife from Orgund Bala village of Wakhan district in Afghanistan was trained by Focus Humanitarian Assistance (FOCUS) as a first aider on the Community Emergency and Response Team. Ashur was thrilled to learn many basic life-saving skills.

One evening, about a year before Aga Khan Foundation’s Community-based Disaster Risk Reduction program came to her village, Ashur was trying to light a lamp and did not know that someone, by mistake, put petrol instead of diesel in the jar. When she lit the flame, a blast of fire erupted and burned both her hands very badly. Her family first put shoe polish on her hands, then toothpaste, potato and many other local treatments. All those remedies were seriously dangerous for healthy healing. She said that she continues to experience pain in her hands due to incorrect treatment. Ashur has now learned from her first aid training that water is the best option. Previously, she and others believed that water was not good for treating burn injuries.  

Ashur and others on the Community Emergency Response Team in Orgund Bala village are now much more knowledgeable about basic first aid and can respond quickly with appropriate measures to care for fellow villager when emergencies occur.

Read more about the Natural Disaster Preparation Project in Afghanistan.