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2,000 Muhammadiyah disaster volunteers to take part in Malang jamboree
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Mitigating disaster: A press conference is attended by (left to right) Muhammadiyah's jamboree on disaster mitigation organizing committee chairman,Budi Santoso, Muhammadiyah Disaster Management Center (MDMC) chairman Budi Setiawan, the center's deputy chairman, Rahmawati Husein, and MDMC secretary Arief Nur Kholis in Yogyakarta earlier this week. (JP/Sri Wahyuni)
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round 2,000 disaster volunteers from Indonesia’s second- largest Muslim organization, Muhammadiyah, are set to take part in a national jamboree in Malang, East Java.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is expected to open the event on Friday.
Muhammadiyah Disaster Management Center (MDMC) chairman Budi Setiawan said the jamboree would be held under the theme “Disaster risk reduction through the improvement of volunteers’ capacity in disaster mitigation”.
“Disaster risk can be significantly reduced when we have high capacity in disaster mitigation,” Budi told The Jakarta Post.
The jamboree’s organizing committee chairman, Budi Santoso, said the event was scheduled to take place from Thursday through Sunday, with participants coming from MDMC branches across Indonesia, Muhammadiyah schools, universities and hospitals, as well as the organization’s youth and women wings.
Budi said a series of activities had been prepared for the jamboree, including seminars, exhibitions, competitions, disaster mitigation simulation and competence examinations for volunteers in the fields of search and rescue, medics and psychosocial.
“This is our way of improving our volunteers’ capacity for disaster risk reduction,” Budi said.
MDMC deputy chairwoman Rahmawati Husein echoed Budi’s statement, underlining the importance of capacity building for volunteers to make them fully ready for deployment in a time of disaster because they had not only willingness but also the capacity to do so.
“We avoid ‘hit and run’ in deploying volunteers in a disaster situation. We stay there until the disaster respond period is over and even until the recovery stage is finished,” Rahmawati said. (ebf)
