Disaster risk management—empowering frontline responders

The Philippines’ fund for disaster prevention and recovery was ineffective when Coalitions for Change (CfC), a Foundation partnership with the Australian Government, began to examine it in 2015. Since its creation in 2010, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund (NDRRM), a crucial national resource, had allocated just 2 percent of its funds to local government preparedness programs. The problem was outdated rules that impeded local government access and emphasized disaster recovery over preparedness. In 2017, the Office of Civil Defense updated the NDRRM guidelines, streamlining local government access to the fund and shifting the focus from response and recovery to preparedness and mitigation.