The El Beni Department is one of Bolivia’s most vulnerable regions, which year after year must face multiple threats, such as floods, droughts and fires in the extremes of climate variability.
Local capacity building
The El Beni Department is one of Bolivia’s most vulnerable regions, which year after year must face multiple threats, such as floods, droughts and fires in the extremes of climate variability.
Many families living in campesino and indigenous communities must abandon their homes -and often times their scant belongings- and seek shelter along roads or move to makeshift shelters in schools in the city of Trinidad, to fight the adversities of climate change.
 Evacuation Drill |
 Puerto Geralda, Trinidad |
This was one of the reasons that motivated Oxfam to start working in this Bolivian Department to address a series of problems that typically affect the poorest and scupper the development plans implemented every year by municipal, department and national authorities to meet the needs of the population.Oxfam is currently implementing three major projects in El Beni: the first is the Recovery of Ancestral Adaptation Practices, such as the so-called camellones (”raised earth platforms”), the second is an Adaptive Territorial Management project, and the third is a Disaster Preparedness project including the implementation of an Early Warning System.
The latter has the support of the European Commission and involves the implementation of an operating, coordinated and sustainable early warning system with four core elements for its operation: risk knowledge, a warning service, communication and dissemination, and the population’s response capacity. This project covered 11 of the Department’s 19 municipalities.
The following are some of the aspects of the project:
Risk knowledge: In the municipalities of Santa Ana, San Joaquín, Magdalena and Trinidad, a hydrologic and flood risk study was conducted in the three subbasins in the Department -El Beni, Mamoré and Iténez. Threat, vulnerability and risk maps were also generated.
Warning service: Installation and refurbishing of 31 hydrometeorological stations in the three subbasins with joint maintenance from Department itself, the El Beni’s Stockbreeders Federation and municipalities. The service also involves the participation of the National Meteorology and Hydrology Service (SEMANMHI), the Service for the Improvement of Amazonian Navigation (SEMENA) and the Government’s Risk Management Department. This work was done at the building of the Emergency Operations Center (COE), which was built by the project.
Communication and Dissemination: A network has been established with the participation of the media and outreach groups, including school brigades, university students and volunteer firefighters, 8,000 radios in cattle ranches, communication networks in the state, and Municipal Risk Management Units.Training has been provided to disaster correspondents in Magdalena, in addition to a three-month course on risk management and journalism in Trinidad.
Response capacity: A series of plans were developed, including a Department Contingency Plan, Municipal Contingency Plans, Communal Response Plans, and an Educational Contingency Plan with the engagement of local education institutions and UNICEF. More than 30 Local Emergency Committees were established in communities in the intervention municipalities. Emergency Operational Committees (COE) were also established in the municipalities of San Joaquín and Magdalena, and the COE in Santa Ana was reinforced.
Operations manuals for the municipal COEs were developed, emergency school brigades were established in the 4 municipalities, volunteer firefighters groups were created in Santa Ana, San Joaquín and Magdalena, and the Trinidad volunteer firefighters group was reinforced.
All this planning has translated into a series of services available to families affected under SPHERE standards in suitable camps that provide all basic services, including kitchen areas and appropriate facilities so children do not have to miss school days. The idea is to dignify individuals temporarily affected by disaster situations and having different needs, such as psychological care and information relevant to their gender and interculturality specificities.
To know more about this expirience make clic in the following link:
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Playa de Oro y Platanitos son dos de las comunidades del municipio de San Miguel Petapa que fueron afectadas por la erupción del volcán Pacaya y el paso de la Tormenta Ágatha. La entrega de filtros de agua potable así como charlas formativas de su uso y conservación forman parte de la asistencia que Oxfam ha dado a unas 325 personas con el apoyo del Departamento de Ayuda Humanitaria de la Comisión Europea (ECHO.)
La organización previa de los vecinos con algunas entidades locales y extranjeras ha permitido que el proceso de recuperación y rehabilitación de la comunidad siga adelante.
Preocupaciones latentes
Las copiosas lluvias que continuaron tras Ágatha ocasionaron el crecimiento del lago de Amatitlán y con ello la inundación de varios hogares a los alrededores, en algunos casos los daños fueron totales. Uno de los efectos fue el colapso de los baños, provocando que muchos de los vecinos utilizaran las calles como letrinas, mientras quitaban los restos de lodo y escombros del interior de sus casas. Según Dora Sosa, una de las líderes comunitarias de Playa de Oro, la preocupación principal era el riesgo de contraer alguna enfermedad, en especial para los pequeños.
Para Dora lo primordial es la salud, sobre todo la prevención de cualquier enfermedad “los de Oxfam vinieron a ayudarnos y pues ya nos estamos identificando con ellos, nos han estado dando información sobre la prevención de salud y sanidad y eso ahorita es lo que se está haciendo, limpiando los hogares para prevenir”, explicó.
Poco a poco las familias han ido tomando más consciencia del manejo de desechos. Aura Marina García, madre de cuatro niños y otra de las líderes comunitarias de Playa de Oro, señala que se está intentando controlar el tema de la basura, en algunos casos la queman y en otros, cuando son plásticos los reciclan y luego los venden, “las pláticas de Oxfam nos vienen a orientar más sobre esto”, detalla.
Casi mes y medio después que la tormenta Ágatha azotara el territorio nacional y ocasionara la evacuación y ocasionara la evacuación y traslado de más de 29.000 personas, muchas familias (unas 25 aproximadamente) ubicadas en la comunidad de Tierra Nueva II, Chinautla continúan esperando poder regresar a sus hogares o ser reubicadas por el gobierno en algún asentamiento. Continue »
El departamento del Beni es una de las regiones más vulnerables de Bolivia y cada año enfrenta múltiples amenazas como inundaciones, sequías e incendios en los extremos de la variación climática.
Muchas familias de las comunidades campesina e indígenas, deben abandonar sus casas y muchas veces todas sus escasas pertenencias y buscar amparo en los márgenes de los caminos, o en refugios improvisados en escuelas de la ciudad de Trinidad, para poder resistir a las adversidades climáticas. Continue »
Vanessa Guillaume, 20 ans, vit à Haiti et fait partie des survivants du tremblement de terre qui a touché la capitale de Port au Prince le 12 janvier 2010 et qui a tué 222 500 personnes et blessé plus de 300 000. Voilà le récit de son experience et de sa vie, six mois après le tremblement de terre. Continue »
Imagine your house being totally ruined after a natural disaster. In less than a minute, you lost what you’ve been fighting for years to keep. The little things you possessed, the little money or business you had, even your loved ones. But as you look around, you realise you’re not the only victim because hundreds of people surrounding you are in the same situation. Plus, everywhere else you know is ruined and everyone you know is in the same boat as you - so, you have no refuge. Now what would you do?
Millions of people found themselves in that same situation on January 12, 2010 after Goudou Goudou (what we named the terrifying earthquake) struck Haiti. As a result, most people were forced to live on the street, under the scorching sun, and in the heavy rains. Little by little, these people began to multiply and form their own little communities in the city. However, they were exposed to a lot of risks and lacked necessary things such as water, food, and shelter. These are things that organisations, like Oxfam, are helping with.
The earthquake may have caused a lot of wreckage, but it also gave people like me a chance to help repair our country and build a better future. Not too long ago, I was hired by Oxfam in Port-au-Prince. I work in the area of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). In my work I focus on public health promotion, so I do stuff like going to camps and educating people on good health practices, teaching children hand washing songs and speaking to mothers about not letting their children play with dirty water. This is another really important aspect of improving living conditions for people in the camps and ensuring that people don’t get sick.
Back to the illustration above: try to imagine what your next couple of days would be like. You wake up the next morning, happy you made it through the night. You hardly slept on the hard floor because of the aftershocks repeating throughout the night. But you thank God you’re alive! You take a look at yourself and realise that you’re all covered in dust from all the ruins, so you can’t wait to take a shower. But wait…where are you going to take that shower? There are no public bathrooms or a house standing in site. Abruptly, you feel this sudden urge to go the bathroom. You see some people behind some bushes; you’re guessing that’s what they’re doing. Having nowhere else to go, you do the same.
And that’s how it all started. More and more people start doing their needs out in the open where they sleep and eat, unaware that they are now even more vulnerable to diseases such as diarrhea and malaria. Now that’s where my job as Public Health Promoter (PHP) Assistant comes in. First of all, my team and I get training sessions about hygiene promotion and sanitation. Then we have to go and train the community about how to prevent the spread of certain diseases. To make things more effective, we work along with Public Health Engineers who set up latrines, water bladders, showers and rainwater catchments in the communities for people to use. Then the PHPs have to mobilise the people to keep themselves and their environment clean, and keep a proper maintenance of the WASH facilities.
I must say that I’m very proud to take part in this achievement because we have made such a difference. Even the public commends us on what we do. But we still have so much more to accomplish. It has been six months since the earthquake and people are still living in the camps. In addition, damaged homes are still waiting to be demolished, and there are still ruins everywhere. This is dangerous for the people, especially during hurricane season. No matter what the government does, I think it would be great if we could do more to help people afford housing and clear their communities of rubble. This will really improve their situation.
Con el apoyo del Departamento de Ayuda Humanitaria de la Comisión Europea (ECHO) Oxfam GB continua la asistencia humanitaria en varias comunidades afectadas por el desastre natural. El pasado 29 de mayo la tormenta tropical Agatha azotó el territorio guatemalteco afectando 20 de los 22 departamentos del país. El impacto de las lluvias se incrementó en algunas zonas por la presencia de ceniza volcánica a consecuencia de la erupción del volcán Pacaya 3 días antes. Según informes oficiales, más de 100.000 personas fueron damnificadas y alrededor de 184.000 evacuadas y trasladadas a albergues temporales, además del colapso de carreteras principales y la destrucción de algunas viviendas por la crecida de ríos y deslizamiento de tierras. Para Thelma Alvarez, madre de tres niñas y vecina de una de las comunidades afectadas del municipio de Amatitlán la experiencia fue dura para toda la familia “Tres personas de Conred sacaron a los niños con lazos. Nos encerró el río Michatoya por una lado y el rio Mico por el otro. Ahora cuando llueve ya no dormimos” explica. Continue »
