Samoa 72 Hours Assessment Approach Sensitization Workshop

Climate change issues such as floods and tropical cyclones will occur more frequent in the near future. These issues are exposing both governments and communities to an increase of loss and damages infrastructure and household assets. One approach to reduce such impact is through Adaptation approach that is to equip people with the knowledge capacity on addressing climate change issues and act accordingly the threats posed. This also means, that institutions and organizations also needs to be equipped with disaster management knowledge capacity to respond faster and efficiently to disasters.
The workshop as facilitated by the World Food Programme is to strengthen capacity and capabilities of DMO and its ally partners to prepare for and respond to disasters in a timely, effective and well-coordinated manner by provision of support within WFPs global mandate, cluster lead agency responsibility and technical expertise.
One of the biggest problems faced by governments and organizations is the lack of information shared on the disaster impact after it struck. To identify which areas were deeply impacted, identifying evacuating sites as well as the number of households in need of food. Therefore the WFP has developed a 72 hour approach that will assist in identifying gaps to ensure the efficiency of our services to communities.
The 72 hours approach is to concentrate on transferring essential technical skills and operational knowledge to national institutions in identified gap areas. The strategies include:
1. Logistics Cluster
2. Food Security Cluster
3. Emergency Telecommunications
4. WFP programmatic technical capacities including Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (VAM), cash transfer modalities and social safety nets in emergencies (CBT)
The approach aims to provide decision makers with information at a very communicative manner within 72 hours. The general objective is to systematically improve services and information services to ensure that an International Organization such as WFP will be able to provide food security assistance.
The expected outcomes of the workshop is generally to familiarize the participants with the approach through various components of the approach. By linking the preparedness, response and recovery to the approach components of i) Data preparedness [including GIS & Mapping components] ii) Secondary Data Analysis and iii) Field Verification. However, the WFP team seeks to:
• Increase awareness and verify roles and responsibilities among the cluster members on the 72 hours approach.
• Identify capacities and flows for the emergency preparedness and response
• Identify key vulnerabilities indicators and specific relevant data that would be relevant for the Samoan context
• Understand the benefits of a data driven process (Collection, verification, currency and sharing)
• Identify gaps and technical capacities for future implementation activities and training potentials (e.g identify national focal point and technical capacity for future trainings)
The workshop composed of technical presentations, consultative discussions and demos to seek for technical sensitization and political agreement among FSC members, Government partners, WFP and other UN and NGO partners. The discussions and conclusions from the training will lay a cornerstone foundation for the potential of the implementation of the 72 hours approach in Samoa.