“Nothing about us without us”[1]. On October 4, 2013 Malteser International in Vietnam in coordination with other NGOs and Disabled People’s Organization of Quang Nam (Quang Nam DPO) held an event to celebrate the International Disaster Risk Reduction Day, aiming to bring up the opportunity for disabled people to raise their voices to decision makers in disaster risk management. The celebration is one of the activities in the Disability Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) project of Disability inclusive DRR Network (DiDRRN), funded by German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
This year, the event with theme “Persons with disabilities in Disaster Risk Reduction” is held in Dai Hong commune, a flood prone area of the Central Vietnam, gathering more than 300 participants including persons with different impairments, Change Agents, local representatives of People’s Committees and many other high managers working in Flood and Storm Control Committees at different levels. Especially, the event was seated by Mr Nguyen Huu Phuc, Director of National Disaster Management Center (DMC). He came along more than 1000km to join in the event and listen to the local people with disabilities sharing confidently about their needs and their capacity after 15- month participating in the project “Disability Inclusive Community based Disaster Risk Management” implemented by Malteser International and Quang Nam DPO with fund from German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Regardless of the three hours in duration, all participants stayed till the end of the event due to the interesting activities: communication competition on “Persons with disabilities with disaster”, hazard mapping drawing competition with the participation of Persons with disabilities. Among the activities happened, what impressed the audience most was the talk show session among local Persons with disabilities with DMC Head, Mr Phuc, on voices of Persons with disabilities in DRR. Mr Tam, a Change Agent from Khuc Luy village, shared that his life experienced a great change since joining the project. “Before, thinking myself as a person with disability, I did not pay attention to the village DRR plan. But now, I am a part of the village DRR committee, I am not so scared of disaster since I can now plan for my safety together with other villagers. Our needs are now included in the village DRR plan. If there is a disaster, people in the priority list will be taken care first”, he shared.
Ms Be, a woman with serious physical impairment, spent her time implementing DPO activities while having to take care of her old parents and raising up her son. Surprisingly, she is still able to make up her time for the project. When being asked about what motivated her to perform the activities helping Persons with disabilities, she smiled: “Having thought that I am useless for society, I once only saved all my best for my family. But after receiving the training of trainer, I can now deliver the trainings to build capacity for my local Persons with disabilities and helped them to participate confidently in their community disaster risk prevention activities. From my experience, I personally think that if Persons with disabilities are provided chances to participate in social activities as other non-disabled people, their confidence will be increased. They will feel that they are respected and useful in this life. They will live better lives. This is the biggest motivation that enabled me to make my time for this project.”
Source: Malteser International and SRD
[1] UN Convention on Rights of Persons with disabilities