Direct assistance in health and education to the most vulnerable populations -especially children, adolescent girls and women- affected by the Venezuelan Crisis in Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador.
The intervention aims to meet the needs of vulnerable populations, focusing on children, adolescent girls, and women affected by the current crisis in Venezuela, by enhancing access to health and education in emergencies (EIE) in Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombia.
In Colombia and Venezuela, the access to primary health care, including response to COVID-19, sexual and reproductive health and mental health were facilitated by providing access to health consultations, medicines, and medical supplies, as well as identification and provision of medical assistance to survivors of gender-based violence (GBV), health education activities and counseling, amongst others.
In Education in Emergencies, the actions will enhance access to an inclusive and quality education to Venezuelan migrants and refugees during quarantine and when returning to school. The activities will promote the retention of migrant/refugee children in schools, through case tracking and referral mechanisms accompaniment, improvement of school environments and infrastructure, capacity building of the educational community to support learning during and after COVID-19, providing distance education, support and access to non-formal education spaces and the delivery of Educational and/or hygiene kits to support children during the COVID19 and returning to school.
In terms of implementation, the education component will be implemented directly by Plan International (PI thereafter) in Colombia and Ecuador. RET will be implementing the component in Ecuador (alongside PI) and in Venezuela. The health component will be implemented directly by Medécins du Monde (MdM thereafter) in Venezuela and Colombia.
RET is implementing the EiE component in Venezuela in the states of Táchira and Zulia, and in Ecuador, it is working together with Plan Internacional to implement the EiE component in the province of Pichincha
The intervention in EiE inside Venezuela will propose multiple objectives:
1) to improve education access and the services offered to contribute to the quality education, school permanence, and learning for children and adolescents;
2) to strengthen institutional capabilities and techniques of education communities to guarantee quality and integrity of the teaching that enables affected schools as safe spaces that enforce Children’s Rights which is crucial for both the protection and socio-emotional development of girls and boys affected by crises.
3) to foster the resilience of the education community by developing sustainable programs adapted to the needs of vulnerable groups that guarantee the continuous delivery of education services.
The before-mentioned objectives will be accomplished by providing educational materials, incentives for teachers (training sessions and learning material), economic subsidies for families, minor rehabilitations of school facilities (mainly WASH facilities), direct support to the school feeding program, and awareness-raising activities for parents and caregivers.
The project will prioritize hygiene supplies and materials and promote hygiene habits to support COVID-19 prevention. 4) Building capacities of local actors in CPIE and EiE to ensure that local actors provide integrated assistance to girls and boys victims of violence, abuse, and exploitation (including gender-based violence).
This project, implemented between July 2020 and July 2021, was implemented in partnership with the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations – European Commission (ECHO) in Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador.
Strengthening comprehensive disaster risk management at the local level in Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico and the Dominican Republic
The Program for Strengthening Comprehensive Disaster Risk Management at the local level is funded by the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID/BHA), its objective is to provide technical assistance and knowledge exchange to strengthen the capacity for DRM at the local level.
Four subsectors will implement the actions of the project: Building Community Awareness, Capacity Building and Training, Integration/Enhancement within Education Systems and Research, and Policy and Planning.The activities will directly reach more than 3,000 beneficiaries in Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico; and indirectly, more than 1,444,000 individuals.
This project, implemented between October 2020 and September 2022, is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) and implemented by RET in Costa Rica, Panama, and México, and in partnership with Plan International in the Dominican Republic.
Latest Projects
Institutional strengthening of the comprehensive risk management and disaster response of the Ministries of Education of Costa Rica and Panama.
The project aimed to increase schools’ resilience and guarantee their safety in the face of disaster events in Costa Rica & Panama through capacity building and institution strengthening of the Costa Rica and Panama Ministries of Education and their strategic partners. The project carried out activities intended to strengthen or build capacities in officials and bodies from the Ministry of Education of Costa Rica and Panamá (MoE) at different national, sub-national and local levels. It also provided institutional strengthening to reinforce the coordination mechanisms and development for the implementation and operationalization of the public policy on comprehensive disaster risk management and response. The project supports border collaboration between the two neighboring countries in terms of the comprehensive disaster risk management.
Civil society IMPACT DDR in Latin America and the Caribbean
In the framework of the project “Civil Society IMPACT DRR in Latin America and the Caribbean. More impulse for inclusion, Multi-Actor Involvement, Participatory DRR Plan of Actions, Collaborative Networking and Transparency. This project aimed to enhance the ability of civil society organizations to contribute to the impact of the SFDRR at the community level by strengthening the collaborative capacities and complementarities among networks in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) Region. With an objective to facilitate the reduction of exposure of the most vulnerable people in the LAC region, this project works across three sub-regions: South America, Central America and the Caribbean and focuses on impact in three risk zones in countries across LAC, to produce a cascade effect through advocacy from participating networks.
Articulation of Early Childhood in Disaster Risk Reduction
The objective of this project was to implement the workshop “Articulation of Early Childhood Development and Disaster Risk Reduction”. The project aimed to provide the community parties and actors responsible for early childhood development with the necessary disaster-risk reduction knowledge and tools to develop skills and efficiently participate in the development of a strategy and action plan to reduce the vulnerability of early childhood in emergencies and during disasters.
Development of capacities to ensure the protection of early childhood against the risk of disasters and emergency situations
This project takes place in Venezuela and Nicaragua and aims to develop the capacities of officials responsible for early childhood care, risk management and emergency response. The targeted groups are staff from UNICEF national offices, national and local counterparts, officials from international agencies and organizations, and people from civil society organizations (both at the national and local level).
Institutionalizing Sustainable Community Based Disaster Risk Management
Due to poor adaptive capacity, such as the low levels of community awareness and communication, poverty, inequality along with political economy factors that hold back community resilience such as the lack of local governance, coordination problems and regulatory environment, the negative impacts of disasters on communities are persisting and organizations and governments are failing to institutionalize effective and sustainable approaches to manage those risks at the local level.
This project aimed to facilitate the scale out and institutionalization of sustainable CBDRM approaches, through increasing the understanding of common success factors for the scale out of community based DRR along with increasing the capacity of governments, CSOs and other actors to work together to co-create the enabling environment factors for community based DRR and preparedness and finally, through increasing the political commitments and accountability for the scale out effective community based DRR and preparedness across the LAC region.