Background
UNDP country office in Syria is implementing a project
entitled
"Sub-regional Facility for Cooperation
in Disaster Reduction among the Arab States".
The main objective of the project is to strengthen
regional and national capacities for disaster risk
reduction through the development of a sub-regional
facility as a partnership platform for knowledge
sharing, networking and development of common approaches
to training and capacity building based on good
practices to reduce capacity disparities within the
region and to introduce appropriate international
experiences that are not present in the region. The
facility will also contribute to achieving adequate
intra-regional mechanism for coordination, research and
information exchange. The project will have a
sub-regional scope covering Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine,
Syria and Yemen.
The management unit in Damascus has developed a Network,
database and a Website. The network will be a mechanism
through which the regional disaster reduction community
can increase on a regular basis to share ideas,
insights, tools, experiences and knowledge, and to
facilitate online discussions and exchange of
information and experiences on practices of all elements
of disaster management and risk reduction posting of
questions and queries, responses and complete the
consolidated replies to queries. It would comprise
membership from a cross section of government and
non-governmental agencies and institutions, academia and
civil society from within the participating countries.
What is a Community of Practice?
A Community of Practice (CoP) is a network and
discussion platform of interested people to capitalize
experience, share and create new knowledge and
innovations. A CoP works mainly through virtual exchange
via email.
A CoP is per definition self-running, that means that
members participate and attend voluntarily, because of
their interest. It is the responsibility of the members
to make it attractive and useful.
Forum (CoP) on " Disaster Reduction in the Arab
States "
The Networking through an email will be a
mechanism through which the regional disaster reduction
community can interact on a regular basis to share
ideas, insights, tools, experiences and knowledge. This
network is will be an external network which will be
managed by a network facilitator who will facilitate the
posting of questions and queries and responses as well
as the compilation of consolidated replies to queries
rose. The important element of this high-level forum is
to bring together national experts of diverse
backgrounds ranging from government policy makers,
national Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to NGOs,
academic institutions and UNDP, working on disaster
management issues to help foster a sense of community
amongst a range of professionals who are grappling with
similar sets of problems in their respective countries
through an extensive consultative process which will
provide opportunities to access available information,
share lessons learnt and promote best practices related
to disaster management.
Institutes and experts and their specific domain
expertise are made visible and available. In turn,
governments will be able to benefit from the experiences
of neighboring countries and therefore shorten their own
learning curves. The main topic of this CoP is "Disaster
Risk Reduction". Within this topic there are many
sub-topics that can be discussed and shared upon. These
topics are defined by participants themselves, based on
their expressed needs and interests.
Participants
The CoP is open to all interested people and
international NGOs, NGO networks, development projects,
Government institutions, research and extension
institutions are especially welcome to participate.
The CoP shall be attractive for practitioners active in
the field of disaster management and risk reduction. An
actual list of participants with their full contact
details will be visible on the website:
www.wiqaya.org
The forum is specially open to :
What are the benefits and costs of
participating?
The benefits of a CoP are the access to a network of
people working in the same field of interest; newest and
processed information; immediate answers to hot issues;
saving of time on gathering information; staying up to
date through the access to news; challenge and
opportunity to contribute to the community.
The costs for participating are the time spent while
joining the CoP, which – based on other experiences – is
estimated as being between 30 minutes and 1.5 hours per
week. In times of intensive virtual discussions on
specific topics it can be more.
Language of the CoP
Each participant can contribute either in Arabic or
English. Contributions in both languages will be
summarized and translated into the other language by the
facilitator. However, contributions in other languages
are still welcome but cannot be translated in this
stage.
First Round
During a first round of discussion until the end of
October 2006, we would like to ask you to suggest topics
of special interest to you in the broad frame of
disaster reduction. To do so, please send an e-mail with
your topics to the email address of project Director at
ghaleb@wiqaya.org . In a later stage,
every member of the CoP can send an email to the whole
group at
wiqayagroup@wiqaya.org.
At the end of October, The team in the facility office
will make a consolidated reply (a synthesis of the
contributions) that will be sent to all participants.
The discussions in the coming months will be based on
the needs and interests expressed in the replies of this
first discussion round. However, it will be possible to
suggest new topics at any time!
Subjects Suggested for Discussion :
