To improve disaster preparedness in Tajikistan by reducing the impact of earthquakes on vulnerable rural populations

Background:
Located at the border of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, Tajikistan is a very mountainous (the mountains, assigned to the highest mountain systems of Central Asia - Tien Shan and the Pamirs, occupy about 93% of the area. Nearly half of the country area is located at 3,000 m and above) and thus an earthquake-prone country. Experts estimates that 70 to 100 thousand people suffered from earthquakes in Tajikistan in the last century.
As most of the houses in the rural area are made of mud bricks they are very vulnerable to earthquakes. Furthermore there is often little knowledge and capacity amongst communities on protection against this kind of disaster. A tragedy that is often, in more traditional areas, misunderstood as having religious or mythical origins.
Thus with this combination of high structural vulnerability with a low level of preparedness for earthquakes and access to appropriate mitigation materials, the occurrence of a major earthquake would likely result in a catastrophe.
Mission East hopes via this project to increase disaster preparedness and awareness of vulnerable communities, making them more resistant to natural disasters such as earthquakes, and better able to recover from the effects of an earthquake.

Action:
Mission East will be working at several levels. First, in communities where Mission East was previously working we will be reinforcing the culture of Disaster Response and Preparedness (DRP). This will happen through some new exciting training and some refresher courses.
Furthermore 16 new communities have also been identified to receive the initial trainings in DRP to improve their chances of survival and to reduce the risk of damage to persons, assets and livelihoods.
In this project, Mission East will also target some communities living in urban areas such as Kurgan Tube, Khujand City and Dushanbe.
In order to insure that this DRP culture is developed at every level of the society Mission East will also train 750 teachers who then will disseminate the message to their pupils in 74 schools.
The communities themselves will receive small grants to set up initiatives that will limit the impact of an earthquake in the village.
And finally as no disaster response is really effective without the involvement of the local institutions Mission East will also help 20 members of the government representing Zonal, District, and Jamoat levels to increase their knowledge of disaster management.