Red Cross helping Caribbean communities build their resiliency to disasters

Guest post by Heather Fehr, Caribbean Community Resilience to Disaster Risk Regional Project Manager with the Canadian Red Cross

It’s 4 a.m. and I’m sleepy, groggy and sweating. It’s the third day in a row I have been up at this time to accompany Guyana Red Cross staff and volunteers to Jacklow, an isolated riverine community in Guyana. The community has been supported by the Guyana Red Cross to explore the vulnerabilities and capacities in their community.

Today, we are going to finalize the community’s mitigation project to decrease their risks to future disasters.

The community has decided to construct an emergency water facility to provide necessary water to the community during draughts and when salt water intrusion occurs, which has recently become a common problem in the community. 

After travelling by land and sea, we arrive at a local school and I can feel the excitement of the first day of construction. I can see the school yard humming with activity; community members have begun organizing themselves to build the 9,000 gallon water storage facility.

The headmaster is standing to the side of the school yard, checking the supplies and organizing the community members into teams. We exchange hellos and are brought up to speed on the progress already made this morning. They have also been up since 4 a.m. Concrete is being manually mixed, measurements are completed, and the shovels are in the ground. I can smell a pot of curry cooking in the back, simmering while the work gets underway. Before we know it, the sun is high in the sky. It’s going to take approximately four weeks to complete the project; we are off to a good start.

View this playlist of short videos to find out more about this project and how it's making a difference.



Jacklow was one of 45 communities throughout Guyana, Jamaica and Dominica that participated in the Canadian Red Cross Caribbean Community Resilience to Disaster Risk Project, a three year initiative supported by the Government of Canada that was recently completed. 

Some of the key project achievements include:

1. Training and equipping 830 Community Response Team members across the Caribbean
2. Disseminating over 10,000 family disaster plans
3. Conducting assessments of 45 communities’ vulnerabilities and capacities with community members in Guyana, Jamaica and Dominica.

The project also measured an increase of 37 per cent in community preparedness across the communities in Guyana and Jamaica using data collected by the Johns Hopkins Community Disaster Risk reduction Monitoring and Evaluation tool.