Over 40 Toledo Residents Graduate CERT Disaster Training

More than 40 residents from the Toledo District have graduated from Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training. The new CERT members from the villages of San Miguel, Na Lum Ca, San Pedro Columbia, San Jose, and San Antonio. They completed rigorous training in disaster risk reduction, first aid, search and rescue, shelter management, and fire safety. The new CERT members will also be equipped with gear to aid in wildfire response.  The CERT training was held by the National Emergency Management Organization (NEMO), with funding from the Protected Areas Conservation Trust (PACT). Daniel Mendez, NEMO’s National Emergency Coordinator, says that the organization has conducted trainings in over a hundred communities across the country to strengthen disaster preparedness and response.

Daniel Mendez, National Emergency Coordinator, NEMO: “NEMO operates on three levels. The first level being the national level where we at the NEMO Secretariat work on coordinating the response to any emergency. Then we have the second level which is at the district level where we work with district leadership. And then finally we work at the community  level. So at the community level, this is where it’s really most important because this is where we are going to ensure that communities really are prepared. And this is where all our work really translates into working and helping communities to prepare for any kind of emergency. These communities were selected because they’re the ones who bore the brunt of the wildfires last year. So it was very important for us to ensure that these communities are prepared for the future in case we have to respond again, in case we see this threat emerging that the community members are prepared for this kind of response. It’s not a new initiative in country. We have partnered with the Belize Red Cross in the past. With the help of the Belize Red Cross, over 100  communities have been reached over time. And so it’s our effort of ensuring that we reach as many communities as possible. So it will be an ongoing initiative in the next few months and years. It will be an ongoing initiative because preparation never ends.”

Kenny Cal, Alcalde, San Miguel Village, said that the training was as inclusive as it was comprehensive, with half the cohort form his village being women.

Kenny Cal, Alcalde, San Miguel Village: “We were contacted by NEMO personnel as one of the village selected to pilot this  project that they had and we were very much happy and receptive with the idea simply because of our recent experience with the wildfire last year, we thought we knew everything about fire, but we were proven wrong.  Certainly this training has enabled us to gear up our knowledge in how we can best be prepared for natural disasters as such. When I came back and after getting the invitation from NEMO and understanding what they wanted to do with the village, I was able to invite many of  our villagers to participate. And happily, we had a very good turnout. We have I think half and half, half men, half ladies, women participating in the session which was very much  appreciated in the part of our women in the communities. We often see that the women are less invited to these forums but  for this session, NEMO was very much receptive to the idea of having that participation and actually was encouraged by people from it. “

The graduation ceremony, held on Thursday, August 14, at Julian Cho Technical High School.