To all humanitarian stakeholders in Myanmar                              

Yangon, 12 September 2008

Dear colleagues,

In the past three decades, climate and natural disaster-related risks have increased significantly, affecting developing countries disproportionately and often reversing development gains.

Myanmar is also facing an increase of natural hazards (severe storms, floods, drought, earthquake, landslide and "fire", .. ) but mostly on recurrent small and medium scale basis.

The Nargis cyclone, classified as a major disaster, has sadly shown, how the Ayeyarwaddy delta area was prone to major natural disasters, but this area is also prone to medium and small recurrent disasters as floods, strong winds, storm, etc…

Taking in account that Disaster Risk Reduction is quite a new concept for some of you or your team members and also that many organizations have already expressed a strong will to integrate disaster risk reduction during the Nargis recovery phase, I would like to share with you the tentative initiative for organizing a one day DRR mainstreaming workshop, which could be held with the support of the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, in October in Yangon.

This "first" DRR mainstreaming workshop will not actually target DRR specialists, but will first and foremost be open to participants or organizations, who wish to integrate DRR components in their future strategy, programme , proposal & budget ! in Myanmar .

As this DRR workshop will give mainly a DRR general overview, other technical DRR workshops could potentially be organized afterwards according to specific needs and requests.

As the workshop will involve a participatory approach (group discussion, questions, .. ), the number of participants could not exceed more than 35 to 40 people. Consequently, we suggest to each organization to select one representative, in order to allow the participation as many as possible of different stakeholders working in Myanmar.

Please find below the initial tentative agenda of this workshop, for which you are most welcome to share your inputs and other expectations:

1 – Presentation of DRR Concept, main terms and definitions:

2 – Overview of DRR integrated approach in Recovery implementation activities as shelter, water , sanitation, livelihood , health , education , …

3 – Recommendations

In order to go further or not in this workshop organization process, please provide your point of view   through the 3 following "quick "questions:

A – Do you consider this DRR mainstreaming workshop relevant for you or another decision maker of your organization?

B – Do you have any recommendation or other expectation which could be added in this tentative agenda? If yes, please give as much detail as possible to avoid misunderstanding

C – Do you plan to attend to this workshop or to send another representative of your organization?

If yes, please mention your organization, the participant name & email address, for confirming date and final agenda .

Thanks very much in advance for your kind attention and quick reply, on the following email address :