Project Narrative
BRACE: Building Resilience and Awareness of Metro Manila Communities to Natural Disaster and Climate Change Impacts Program.
The purpose of the project BRACE, was to prepare and protect communities in metro Manila from natural disasters and the impacts of climate change. The project was supported by a preparatory phase to provide capacity building and start some of the key processes. During the early phase it was important to build cooperation with stakeholders based on sound information and establishing practical networks and it was equally important to avoid assuming that past solutions were still the best.
Key services provided
The project undertook the following activities and services to reduce risk and place the Taguig City Government (TCG) in a prime position to maximise benefits from the main BRACE project, these included:
- an inception study based on a rapid assessment to evaluate the base data and to summarise key matters, risks and exposures that may or may not have been shown in the work done so far, a and any actions and risk mitigation measures;
- an emphasis on identifying and describing alternate financing and housing delivery approaches to the conventional approach outlined in the ICC documents;
- the input of latest knowledge and experiences in incorporating DRR and DRM into gender sensitive safer settlement designs;
- a participatory approach to obtaining stakeholder ‘buy-in’ to the key milestones of this project;
- close collaboration with senior TCG staff, AusAID staff, the project co-ordinator and continuous dialogue throughout the consultancy;
- establishing a unified work plan and resource plan and good working relations with both the capacity building team and the resettlement consultancy;
- accessing a very high level expert panel;
- an action learning method of working closely with the staff of TCG to build appreciation and knowledge of the processes being used during the consultancy.
The expert panel provided high level advice and quality assurance on the project outputs to ensure the project demonstrated best practices in safe settlement development.
