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Congratulations to Terry, Marcus and all! I think the VFL is making a huge impact on the global process towards the realisation of the HFA goal. I was at the First Session and already feel I am there as I follow your vivid description of events. The questions on my mind as we closed the First Session were: Are we going to see a significant progress on the implementation of HFA in two years' time- at the time of the Second Session? And how effective would be the contribution of civil society? I am thrilled we found VFL. For all intends and purposes, it is proving to be a vehicle we have used to make a giant step in setting up the stage for accelerated implementation of HFA.

On Next Steps, organising 'a series of regional and global learning reviews with network members to learn from the VFL pilot experience; drawing out recommendations for the future' is key. At these review and learning sessions, we should 'Research social networking innovations as means to engage and foster active citizenry, raise critical awareness, build social demand and strengthen public accountability for risk reduction'.  This will ensure community action (or demand) and government action go hand in hand for effective HFA implementation.

In fact, it would be useful to discuss all the next steps indicated and concretely plan to carry them out, particularly to Establish multi-donor trust fund to support the development of VFL.

Wish you a fruitful Second Session!

Dear Terry et al.,

Even though in micro level (in Indonesia context), we witness how grassroot people are very committed to support and mainstream the DRR principle as this will benefit themselves, we are quite pessimistic that the govenment will trully prioritize DRR principles in concrete program. Ironically, we currently see intensive government DRR program in the village level due to support from the World Bank (it is still debatable whether the funding status is a loan or grant) without being aware that DRR initiatives will remain sustain if it is conducted through self-resilient strategy. We hope strong political will from Indonesian government to put DRR issues into actions based on self-resilience principles.    

Regards,

Hepi Rahmawati

NCO Indonesia

Thanks Pradeep and Abhishek for that feedback - firstly a number of network members are highlighting the need to bring communities to the forefront and to build partnerships which make them active participants, and get them better access to resources. Abhishek mentions the capacity of the network to support disaster response, and this reflects the ability of the network to share learning and resources. We will raise both these points in our meetings today and bring back responses. Thanks!