Last year, the Senate Electoral Tribunal conducted a Disaster Awareness and Preparedness Training, aimed at increasing awareness of the impact of climate change, understanding the importance of the Incident Command System on disaster response and management, and identifying the key personnel to compose the Tribunal’s Incident Management Team.

This year, the Gender Sensitive and Gender Responsive Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) Course for Public Sector was conducted on July 18-20, 2023 at the SRA Social Hall in Quezon City, specifically to capacitate the members of the Incident Management Team on possible strategies on disaster mitigation and response operations.

With this three-day course consisting of seven modules, the members of the said team certainly gained a better and deeper understanding of disaster risk reduction and management to help the agency formulate and implement a gender sensitive and gender responsive DRRM policy and plan which will ensure safety in the workplace, and thus, ultimately redound to the benefit of all employees and stakeholders.

The esteemed lecturers for this course included Mr. Joe Carlo L. Soriano, Jr., Mr. Robert Padillo, Mr. Noel H. Mapalo, and Mr. Raffy Lucas from the Office of Civil Defense (OCD); Mr. Jeffrey S. Perez from the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) of the Department of Science and Technology; Engr. Bernard R. Punzalan II from the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAG-ASA); Mr. Ross Dominic D. Agot and Mr. Jethro B. Capino from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Mines and Geosciences Bureau (DENR-MGB); Mr. Francis Raize Bautista from the Department of Health (DOH); and Mr. Jayson S. Santiago from the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP).  Their expertise and impressive professional experience undoubtedly provided the pertinent and indispensable information to achieve the primary objectives of this activity.