International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction
The International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction is an opportunity to acknowledge the progress being made toward reducing disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods and health.
Meet Vo Thi Tan, she is a 60 year old Vietnamese woman who use to live in an unstable house with an unsafe steel roof. Sadly, during a fierce storm hit Vo Thi Tan’s village her roof was blown off. She said she will never forget the fear she felt that day and how unsafe she felt. Habitat for Humanity Australia partnered with Vo Thi Tan to rebuild her home.
As part of Habitat for Humanity Australia’s international programs in Vietnam, we work with our implementing partner Habitat for Humanity Vietnam to provide PASSA (Participatory Approach to Safe Shelter Awareness) training to the communities we work in. A participatory approach to safe shelter awareness (PASSA) aims to raise the awareness of the ‘every day vulnerable’ of the ‘everyday risks’ related to their built environment and foster locally appropriate safe shelter and settlement practices.
Vo Thi Tan is an active member of the PASSA group, she contributed her voice to find a solution to reducing the risk of natural disaster for her own home and community. Through her training, she was confident she could protect their home from disaster by utilising the wood from their garden to strengthen their roof by applying resilient shelter techniques.
As a result, when Vietnam was hit consecutively by six tropical storms and typhoons that brought heavy rains and widespread flooding to much of central Vietnam including Quang Nam, especially Typhoon Molave. It was reportedly the strongest storm to hit Vietnam in 20 years, damaging about 92,000 houses with a majority of them in Quang Nam where Vo Thi Tan and her family live. Thanks to the reinforced roof Vo Thi Tan and her family were safe through the storms and their home was not damaged.
This project receives support from the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP) to enable our implementing partner Habitat for Humanity Vietnam to provide vulnerable families with livelihood skills to make their shelters more resilient to natural disasters in Vietnam.
