The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) has described its regional disaster management program held earlier this week, as a huge success.
According to a release form CDEMA, the program dubbed ‘Exercise Region Rap’ was held with its Participating States and Regional Response Mechanism (RRM) partners.
14 Participating States and 16 regional and international partners participated in the program, including development partners, CARICOM institutions and UN Agencies.
In an effort to integrate youth participation and promote their involvement in Comprehensive Disaster Management (CDM), the exercise was executed with the support of student volunteers from the Queens College in Barbados.
Exercise Region Rap is a Regional Telecommunications exercise conducted annually by the CDEMA Coordinating Unit (CU) to test communications procedures, plans and networks of National Disaster Organizations (NDOs) across the CDEMA Participating States and with RRM partners.
The exercise is designed to provide a platform for advancing the Region’s telecommunications arrangements.
CDEMA said the success of this week’s exercise is a testament to the joint efforts with its partners in ensuring emergency telecommunications capabilities are tested across the CDEMA system.
The Exercise focuses on establishing communications with Participating States and RRM Partners via e-mail, land-line, satellite phone, Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN), HF-VHF radio, WhatsApp chat, Google document, social media (Facebook and Twitter) and zoom meeting link.
These are the forms of communications utilized during the operations of the Regional Coordination Center (RCC).
This exercise aims to confirm connectivity among the RRM partners via the various available mediums, which includes connectivity between the CDEMA sub-regional focal points and their sub-regional states and the wider CDEMA system.
Exercise Region RAP 2020 was made possible through the Targeted Support to CDEMA initiative funded by the Government of Canada.
