GOAL Malawi presents the ARC-D toolkit at the 2018 National Disaster Risk Management Platform Symposium

The symposium was organized by the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DoDMA) in collaboration with other partners involved in DRM at national and local levels.

[Lilongwe, Malawi, October 2018]— Two members from GOAL Malawi participated during 2018 annual DRM symposium which was organized to provide an opportunity for different stakeholders to showcase their different roles in building integrated resilience and strengthening policy dialogue. The forum also provided participants with opportunities for knowledge sharing and experience exchange that would eventually set new strategies that directly reduce disaster economic loss, resulting into an urban resilient Malawi. The NPDRM symposium is an inclusive conference that covers a wide range of topics pertinent to reducing direct disaster economic loss.

Figure 1. Part of the audience during GOAL’s Presentation, Pic Louis Toby Solomon, Emergency and Resilience Coordinator.

The conference was attended by scientists, policy makers, private sector, academia, non-governmental organizations, and the donor community under the theme “Building integrated resilience and strengthening policy dialogue”. The forum was organized in a way that there were several subthemes and GOAL Malawi made a presentation on the ARC-D toolkit under the subtheme: “Measuring disaster risks, and investments impacts and economic losses resulting from disasters”. Vincent Dzikupi, MEAL officer based in Chikwawa, Malawi presented the ARC-D toolkit.

GOALs’ Emergency and resilience coordinator also participated in various sessions such as; Institutional Strengthening for Disaster Risk Reduction, Communication management and Coordination systems, Financing and measuring impact of investment for DRR but also Research and Practice in Urban Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and Resilience amongst others. There was an outstanding reception from the audience regarding the ARC-D toolkit and some donors, such as (DFID, expressed interest and promised to contact GOAL to seek the best way this could be scaled up within their programming. Furthermore, the department of disaster management affairs also assured GOAL that it will form a task force at national level to promote resilience measuring toolkits and GOAL would be main contact throughout this process. GOAL is also bringing together various NGOs and government departments to form a community of practice (CoPs), which aims to promote resilience measuring toolkits. This is a follow up activity to the trainings that GOAL facilitated in Malawi through a team from Honduras.

Figure 2. Vincent Dzikupi, MEAL Officer presenting Toolkit while audience listens, Photograph by Louis Solomon, E and R Coordinator.

GOAL´s Resilience boilerplate:

Established in 1977, GOAL is an international humanitarian and development agency, committed to working with communities to achieve sustainable and innovative early response in crises, and lasting solutions to poverty and vulnerability. GOAL has worked in over 60 countries and responded to almost every major humanitarian disaster. We are currently operational in 13 countries globally.