Video transcript: Helping communities prepare for natural disasters

Sophie Mack Smith: Jane Beesley recently came back from Tajikistan where she went, went to visit some of our disaster risk reduction programmes. Jane can you tell us what is a disaster risk reduction programme, and why Tajikistan?

Jane Beesley: Well, a disaster risk reduction programme is where we’re working with communities where we’re helping people to be prepared to avoid disasters, or to be in a better position to, um, respond when there is one. And Tajikistan actually is uh prone to a lot of natural disasters. You know, from floods, avalanches, mudflows, earthquakes, fires – there’s a big risk of fires at the moment because it’s very hot, and over the last two years there’s been extreme cold winters.

One of the other things we’re doing is uh we’re particularly targeting women, and working with women. First of all, it’s normally acknowledged that women and children are at greater risk of disasters than men, but, because a lot of men are now away in Russia working, and they’re sending money back to their families, we normally work with people who are um women-headed households. So when something does happen, it has to be the women that are responding. It has to be the women that know what to do.

SMS: And did you meet anybody who particularly inspired you?

JB: Oh gosh, I think I met a lot of people who inspired me, um, maybe um a couple of people I’d like to talk about.

One was a young woman, she’s about um what 22, 23. And she’s a volunteer. She’s a member of one of our rescue brigades. And a rescue brigade is, is a group of people, and they don’t have to be young people, you know they range from 19 to their late 40s, and uh we do a lot of training with them, you know first aid, in rescue, in how to respond to the different types of emergencies.

This young woman was very enthusiastic about, you know, the work she was doing in the rescue brigade. But her father wasn’t very keen, um, on her taking part, and she had to persuade him to come and see the work of the rescue brigade. You know he had to come down from quite high up in the villages you know, she had to do quite a lot of persuading.

And then, then, he saw that other women were taking part and saw Oxfam, and he saw, you know, the fire brigade, and he saw quite official people, that he realised that this was okay, and so he sent for a uniform and she could take part. And she was saying that as soon as he saw her taking part in all these activities he was really proud. And he was taking lots of photographs and videos, and you know was saying, you know, in a proud way that she was, you know, he had seven daughters and she was like his son.

And when I asked her about, uh, how do you feel about being part of this team, she just said, oh I feel so free. And she was really proud, because you know she was also talking about how she could beat all the guys at uh, at running. And she just enjoyed every single aspect of uh the work they were doing.

SMS: And who’s this lady here?

JB: Oh this is Bibi, this is a member of Oxfam staff. She’s actually a community mobiliser which means she goes to various communities and gets people involved in disaster preparedness. And she’s quite exceptional, uh, she works with communities that are very, very remote, and the only way that she can get to some of these places is by horseback. So she has to ride for eight, ten hours. And, you know, you’ve got to think this is a very remote country and there are, um, and there are still bears and wolfs in the area so I think you’ve got to be pretty tough, and she gets there. But, uh, she just loves her job and, um, she said, whatever time of day, she is always there for the community. And she’s really, really hoping that we can do a lot more work with women, because women are particularly isolated.

SMS: Jane Beesley, thank you very much.

Date: 14 October 2009

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