Aapda Mitra

National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has been implementing a central sector scheme namely Aapda Mitra since May 2016 with a focus on training community volunteers in disaster response in selected most flood prone districts of 25 States of India.

Scope and Coverage

To begin with 6000 community volunteers (200 volunteers per district) were to be trained in disaster response in selected 30 most flood prone districts of 25 States of India as of March 2021. The scheme is upscaled Pan India to train 100,000 Volunteers in 350 selected highly vulnerable districts prone to flood, cyclone, landslide and earthquake in across the country as of March 2024.

Aim

The scheme aims to provide the community volunteers with the skills that they would need to respond to their community’s immediate needs in the aftermath of a disaster thereby enabling them to undertake basic relief and rescue tasks during emergency situations such as floods, flash-floods and urban flooding.

Objectives

The objectives of the scheme:

• To train able-bodied community volunteers in multi disaster response at the taluka/block level in each of the project districts.
• In addition to training the volunteers in life-saving skills, the scheme would also train them in disaster response, coordination and relief assistance.
• To create a community emergency stockpile/reserve at the district/ block level, containing essential light search and rescue equipments, medical first-aid kits, etc.

Scheme components

The components of the scheme are as follows:

• Translation and Printing of Training Modules, I-card & Certificate for volunteers
• Purchase of Emergency Responder Kit (ERK), including Group Insurance for trained volunteers. The insurance will cover death, permanent total disability, permanent partial disability, temporary total disability, and hospital expenses
• Purchase of Emergency Essential Resource Reserve (EERR) for each District
• Grant for repair & maintenance of equipments under EERR
• Management Information System (MIS)  for overall monitoring of the Scheme: Information regarding no. of volunteers trained, trainer details, training institutions profile, procured items under ERK and EERR, financial data and insurance is being updated on Aapda Mitra MIS portal regularly. Mobile application has been also developed for live-tracking of trained volunteers.

Source : NDMA