ZERO Project Award for Innovative Practice 2020 – PANAMA

RET Americas was granted the Zero Project Award 2020 for Innovative Practice for “Including Children, Adolescents and Youth with Disabilities in Disaster Risk Reduction and Management practices.”

RET Americas has been implementing an inclusive school safety project in Panama, to teach students with disabilities how to manage the risks associated with natural hazards. This unique project integrates Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Management Practices into public schools to address the needs of children and youth with disabilities.
This is the first project in Panama to integrate Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Management practices into public schools to address the needs of children and youth with disabilities. This unique project empowers young people with disabilities to be positive agents of change in both Disaster Risk Reduction and first response. Since 2015, nearly 8,000 young people with disabilities have taken part in the project.

About RET DRR Projects
RET has been designing and implementing projects on DRR since 2009, working in multiple countries in the LAC region, including Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama at the national and regional level, using innovative approaches and ground-breaking interventions focused on: (1) Participation of children, adolescents and young people in DRR (including children with disabilities); (2) Advocacy and institutional strengthening in DRR focused on children and youth; (3) Development of tools and frameworks for DRR focusing on children and young people.

The DRR projects focus specifically on the needs of children, adolescents and young people, aimed at building their resilience through capacity strengthening under a rights-based approach. In addition, the DRR projects respond to early childhood and adolescents and young people’s needs and to the essentials of people with disabilities or indigenous groups. Some of RET’s DRR projects comprises of institutional capacity building and strengthening processes contributing to the design and/or implementation of their DRR public policies. Moreover, other projects have focused on a community level through the implementation of risk management models.

During the last 10 years RET has implemented more than 20 DRR-focused regional and national projects, including integral actions in other sectors such as education, protection, health and/or WASH and livelihoods, benefiting more than 30,000 participants directly, and 90,000 indirectly.

Learn more about RET’s Inclusive Education & DRR work in Panama.

Partners & Achievements
RET is actively engaged at the global level in the “Global Alliance for Risks Reduction and Resilience of the Education Sector” (GADRRRES).  In the LAC, RET is a member of the “Regional Education Sector Group for DRR and Education in Emergencies” and has been the coordinator of the “Coalition for Children and Youth Resilience in Latin America and the Caribbean – CORELAC”. As a leader of CORELAC, the movement “Voices of Children and Youth for Resilience” has been promoted, reaching more than 6,000 young people in collaboration with UNICEF and UNDRR, Save the Children, Plan and World Vision. This initiative succeeded in incorporating the participation of young people from LAC in different regional platforms for DRR (Chile, Ecuador and Canada). The initiative led to the recognition of children’ and youth’ participation at the “World Conference on DRR” held in SENDAI in 2015; fundamentally influenced the inclusion of children and young people as “relevant actors” in the document of the SENDAI Framework for Disaster Risks Reduction 2015-2030

Learn more about RET Disaster Risk Reduction approaches.