Red Cross to Train Youth Volunteers in Disaster Preparedness

Lily Bowman

About sixteen youth volunteers from across the country will take part in a four-day training in disaster preparedness, spearheaded by the Belize Red Cross Society. The training will be held under an ongoing project called Caribbean Prepared. It comes at a time when Belize is most prone to hurricanes at this time of the year, with a tropical system entering the Eastern Caribbean and different models showing its trajectory heading in our general direction. Red Cross Director-General, Lily Bowman told News Five today that the training follows a recent evaluation in the organization’s logistics capacity and relief stocks and a communications session last week.

Lily Bowman, Director-General, Belize Red Cross Society

“It’s a vast – training in vast areas but all connected to preparedness to respond in a time emergency and it couldn’t have been more timely because we are now looking to face. We will be supported by the Honduran Red Cross so the facilitator is a young person from Honduras. We’re also awaiting the import of two containers with pre-position relief non-food stocks. That is going to be allowing us to preposition the branches as well so if in the case of we don’t know where an event would happen, what part of the country it would land if it is to come our way, so we want to be prepared. They are trained in definitely search and rescue. We have groups in so many communities – over a hundred communities that have been trained to act in search and rescue and how to manage and E.O.C., which is an emergency operating centre, relief and supplies, managing warehousing. They are trained in pretty much everything.”