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Mongolia

Appeal No. MAAMN001 Programme Update No. 2

Attachments

This report covers the period 1/7/2011 to 31/12/2011

In brief

Programme(s) summary

During this reporting period the Mongolian Red Cross Society (MRCS) has been focusing its efforts on scaling up its community-based development programmes across the country while taking significant steps towards building its capacity to provide timely relief, emergency health and water sanitation services to disaster affected populations.

There has been significant progress in the development of the National Society's contingency plan as well as establishment of its national disaster response team (NDRT). A five-day induction course of NDRT has been organized in September for 27 staff and volunteers of MRCS headquarters and branches. This process will continue throughout 2012 aiming at establishing specialized teams within NDRT on relief, emergency health, and water and sanitation.

The implementation of community-based health and first aid project (CBHFA) which is being conducted in 12 districts (soums) of four of the Gobi provinces has successfully progressed reaching 10,469 community members and 954 school children. As a result of this continuous intervention, the people reached are expected to have improved knowledge, awareness and practice on disease prevention, healthy behaviour, first aid and disaster preparedness and response.

Also, the National Society has launched a community-based disaster risk reduction project in nine locations both in rural and urban settings and has completed initial trainings on vulnerability and capacity assessment, developing a community plan of action and other important topics. In addition, the earthquake preparedness project that focuses on educating schoolchildren in selected schools of Ulaanbaatar and helping elected hospitals become better prepared for an earthquake has seen a significant progress in the implementation of planned activities.

One of the key successes during this reporting period was that the MRCS has clearly demonstrated how it recognizes the importance of working in partnership and has organized its first partnership meeting for Mongolia that was held late September in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. This initiative will continue as one of the traditional events MRCS will be carrying out on an annual basis.