ECHO grants Rs 360 million

The Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department of the European Commission (ECHO) will provide 3.28 million euros (approximately Rs 360 million) for disaster risk reduction in different parts of Nepal, under its seventh Disaster Preparedness Action Plan for South Asia.

The action plan intends to further reduce the vulnerability of rural populations living in areas most affected by natural disasters and those highly vulnerable to earthquakes — notably in urban settings — by increasing the preparedness and the response capacities of local communities and authorities to potential and frequent natural disasters.

In the past, Disaster Preparedness Action Plan projects have focused on piloting and testing replicable community-based disaster preparedness models at grassroots level. Such actions have often been successful in increasing targeted communities' resilience and raising awareness of local stakeholders, and relevant models and tools have been developed.

The projects have contributed to the five flagship initiatives of the Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium. The current projects are implemented by four leading partners in Nepal and will be covering 13 districts in four development regions, including municipalities in the Kathmandu valley.