Indonesia is near the top of countries at risk for natural disasters. It’s important for families to be prepared at all times. To improve emergency preparedness, ChildFund held a Disaster Risk Reduction Youth Facilitator Workshop in Jakarta earlier this week. Our Indonesia office reports that more than 80 youth from across the country attended the workshop, which was also attended by the director of Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency.

As a result, one of the youth, Angelus, has been selected to join the Indonesian government delegation at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction conference, being held later this month in Geneva, Switzerland.

“Learning about disaster risk reduction (DRR) is really something new to me,” Angelus says. “I found it very interesting and a positive activity. We learn best practices from others that we also could apply in our programs back home. I obtained this knowledge from ChildFund at no cost. I want to pay it off by sharing it with others,” he said.

We can’t wait to hear about his learning experiences in Geneva!

As the InterAction Forum 2013 winds down, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, president of World Bank Group, is making some great points. I’ll share a few quotes:

“The World Bank wants to get back to focusing on poverty.”

Kim says he plans to open doors “even wider” at the World Bank, adding that he’s “not giving up” on achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

As for post-2015, the World Bank has a goal of ending poverty as we know it by 2030 and plans to publish country-by-country results yearly.

“The opportunity right now to bring forces together to achieve impact has never been higher.”

“It is only civil society that can truly make a movement that can really transform society.”

“Resiliency  is not about absorbing pain forever,” — Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, General Secretary, World YWCA, speaking at InterAction Forum in Washington, D.C.

Attending InterAction’s Forum in Washington, D.C., this week. António Guterres, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is speaking at the opening session. He notes that the international community’s capacity to prevent conflicts really doesn’t exist. As a result, we will “face more and more humanitarian consequences.”

unicef:

Immunization Saves Lives
Great news friends…global Leaders Support New Six-Year Plan to Deliver a Polio-Free World by 2018

■ Pledges announced will enable over a billion children to be vaccinated
■ Global eradication program will move simultaneously on multiple fronts expanding focus to improve childhood immunization and protect gains made to date
■ New commitments by governments and philanthropists boost effort to meet plan’s budget goal

Polio-Free World…now wouldn’t that be something?

Read more here.

Indeed, this would be something! Immunizations save lives every day.