On Wednesday April 26th to Thursday 27th, 2017Dr. Julius Ssentongo, RAN Eastern Africa RILab Program Coordinator participated in the Humanitarian Leadership Academy (HLA) Conference on Localization and Contextualization of Disaster Risk Reduction and Management that took place in Naivasha-Kenya. The main objective of the conference was to share learning from a cross-section of humanitarian and development stakeholders on how national/sub-national structures can, through empowerment, context specific approaches, and capacity sharing, provide leadership in implementation of the resilience and disaster preparedness agenda. Such lessons are particularly important for developing models that can be used for devolved and decentralized planning and actions.
The conference was attended by over 60 participants drawn from the public, private, not-for-profit and academic/research sectors in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and the United Kingdom among others.
While at the conference, Dr. Ssentongo joined in a panel on‘ How learning can contribute to effective delivery on Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) at sub-national level’.The panel discussion focused on answering 3 key questions: 1) How are learning institutions connecting with delivery institutions? 2) What interventions are needed to support linkage between learning institutions and delivery institutions? And 3) What else does learning need to include to be of effective use for localization and contextualization of DRRM?The conference provided yet another rich knowledge generation and sharing opportunity including first hand experiences and learning about localization and contextualization of DRRM within the devolution/decentralization process. This invitation is part of Collaboration between HLA, RAN and Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) to deliver an online course on Humanitarian and Disaster Resilience scheduled to start June, 2017.
As part of next steps, the HLA will travel to Kampala to meet with learning and delivery institutions in Uganda on May 10th, 2017. RAN will be represented at this meeting aiming at conceptualizing a platform/consortium for sharing lessons and best practices on Disaster Risk Reduction and Management.
