Building partnerships

Operations were fully resumed after the national elections and the project team initiated steps to revise the relevant paperwork for submission to the NGO Affairs Bureau (NGOAB) based on HIF’s approval of the revisions and the conditional agreement to extend the project beyond its current stipulated end date. Subsequently preparations were made to meet the Secretary of Disaster Management and Relief to coincide with the submission of the revised documents to the NGOAB for approval ideally by the first week of February 2014.

The project team had another follow-up meeting with the Bangladesh Metrological Department (BMD) to further express interest on exploring areas for collaboration in order to address gaps identified with the CDMP-RIMES project. The BMD have been keen to explore options and determine if both the HIF and CDMP projects are able to complement each other and strengthen the efforts to improve the dissemination of early warning and upgrade the level of preparedness of the fishing communities.

At the field level, the project team has completed the collection of the preliminary baseline data and is now engaged in consolidation and analysis of the information on hand. The draft report is expected to be ready by March 2014.