CLASS A: EMERGENCY RESPONSE POLICY DISCUSSION

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If I were a special consultant, I would advise the governor to do three things to enable and empower remote communities with training and resources that are essential to responding effectively to disasters. I would do this through an open and transparent process involving public reviews and input. Firstly, I would appeal to the governor to implement community-based disaster enlightenment programs and commit to ensuring ease of access to learning resources as part of effective disaster response policies. This move would augment the community’s competency and abilities in disaster risk reduction (DRR), humanitarian work after disasters, and disaster preparedness and response. Secondly, I would advise the governor to create and fund community-oriented empowerment-enhancing initiatives and disaster safety practices. Then, he would move to engage local institutions of learning to collaborate in disseminating such practices and activities as an imperative policy component for sustainable community-centered disaster management. Lastly, I would advise the governor to initiate and deploy strategic disaster-oriented task forces and empower the community with resources to activate these task forces for enhanced disaster response.

Assuming that I am considering strategic- or executive-level policy, my recommendations on the policy requirements for the governor to adopt indicate that the best balance is between top-down and bottom-up approaches to disaster management policy. A balance between top-down and bottom-up approaches will enhance the chances of eliciting and achieving support under the current circumstances because it emphasizes community empowerment trough training and resource deployment. Community empowerment, along with training and keeping the community informed in disaster response policy are the key groundwork for attaining sound community resilience to disasters.

Bibliography

Plough, Alonzo, Jonathan E. Fielding, Anita Chandra, Malcolm Williams, David Eisenman, Kenneth B. Wells, Grace Y. Law, Stella Fogleman, and Aizita Magaña. “Building community disaster resilience: perspectives from a large urban county department of public health.” American Journal of Public Health 103, no. 7 (2013): 1190-1197.

Rajeev M. M. “Sustainability and community empowerment in disaster management.” International Journal of Social Work and Human Services Practice 2, no. 6 (2014): 207-212.

Win, Yin Mar Nay. “A study on disaster risk reduction and management in community (Case Study: Bilin Township, Thaton District, Mon State)” PhD diss., Yangon University of Economics, 2019, 1-45.