The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has issued a call to eligible organizations from 18 member countries to apply for funding to support community-based disaster risk reduction efforts and climate change adaptation projects.

The aim of the project is two-fold. The fund will provide direct and responsive support for interventions that address specific local disaster risks and the risk reduction needs of communities; while allowing members of vulnerable communities to be actively engaged in the identification and analysis of these natural hazards, and in the design and implementation of risk reduction projects. In this regard, the process will allow communities to enhance their ability to prevent, prepare for and cope with future disasters.

The selected projects will be financed by the Bank’s Community Disaster Risk Reduction Fund (CDRRF), with a grant ranging from USD$400,000 to $650,000.

The grant will support a proposal preparation process in which members of vulnerable communities are actively engaged, so as to increase the level of community ownership and involvement in disaster risk reduction activities.

Leslie Walling, CDB Project Manager for the CDRRF said that providing vulnerable communities with direct access to grant opportunities will also help to  increase the speed of delivery of desired benefits, cut transaction costs and achieve better targeting of community-level priorities.

“Although extreme natural hazard events such as hurricanes, storms, droughts and climate change effects such as sea-level rise may affect an entire country, in the final analysis, all disasters are local phenomena,” Mr. Walling said. “This means that disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation must, by definition, be a fundamentally local affair.” 

The fund was established by CDB with financing from Canada’s Department for Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD) and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID).

Applicants must be based in, belong to, or partner with the communities for which projects are being proposed. Eligible applicant organizations include Community Based Organizations (CBOs), Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Faith Based Organizations (FBOs), Government Agencies and National Research Institutions based in eligible Caribbean countries.

Countries which are eligible under the CDRRF are: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

The deadline for application is August 12, 2014. Application documents and guidelines are available on the Bank’s website at http://www.caribank.org/programmes/cdrr1.