ISLAMABAD: (Ayesha Naz) According to the officials of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), a massive program is initiated by the Youth Program of the Prime Minister to train young volunteers in managing disaster risk.
The two parties signed a letter of intent a few months ago, which stipulated cooperation in the framework of the National Volunteer Corps, a flagship program of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif who also became the first registered volunteer of the program.
First, the program was supposed to train 2 Lakh youthful men and women. Nonetheless, when the Prime Minister was recently at NDMA, he increased the goal, asking authorities to train 2 million youth within the next three years.
The project will be undertaken with several volunteer based organizations to include the Pakistan Red Crescent, and other local and international organizations dealing with education, information technology, sports and community development activities.
According to the officials, the program is aimed at developing national capacity to act in the event of the disaster, especially due to increasing demand on the issue of climate change. The training will provide the volunteers with practically applicable disaster preparedness, response and recovering skills.
It is not a project but a nationwide movement, one of the officials threw a light on, saying that it is high time that Pakistan depended on its own population to bring about solutions to its problems. The spirit of this program is that strong countries solve their problems internally.
The technical training part will be headed by NDMA, and outreach and implementation will be facilitated nationwide by partner organizations.
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