The youth Ambassadors of peace (YAP) on Saturday organized a one day session on community action plan on how to effectively address the issue of vulnerability of the communities of Janack, Kaimo, Kusamai and Kabocorr villages. The discussion, held at Sibanor Lower Basic School in Foni Bintang, Western Region, was sponsored mainly by Concern Universal.

Given a brief history of YAP, Davda Nasso, chapter chairperson, Western Region, said the youth ambassador of peace was established in the Gambia by promunent Gambian youths, having realized the need to build the capacity of people in promoting the culture of peace and non-violence.

"This is in tendem with our mission statement', he said, pointing out that hazards were composed of multiple threats, given environemntal degradation, draught and internal conflicts as examples.  Mr Naso further said that social groups were more concerned with greater mobility and access to information, adding that given the frequency of diasaster, responders and victims were grabbling with resource constraints to bring relief and comfort to the vulnerable.

For his part, Mr Manfred Bojang, desk officer for emergency preparedness prevention and response at St. Joseph's Family Farm Centre (EPPR), deputising for Mr Ebou Fye Njie, EPPR Manager, Concern Universal, dwelled on the general objective, which he said is to generate knowledge sharing to support disaster risk reduction strategic process in the region.

Mr Bojang further pointed out the key objectives, which he said was to build the resilience and capacity of the target communities and their partners, to prevent, prepare for, and mitigate the effects of conflicts and disaster through participative analysis of local vulnerabilities and capacities, thus resulting in small projects implementation to address identified vulnerabilities.  According to Mr Bojang, the project also aims at enhancing and protecting the livelihoods of marginalized refugee host communities in Janack, Kabokorr, kaimu and kusamai, with populations of 678, 306, 572 and 444 respectively.

Also present at the occasion were Wassa B. Jammeh, officer in charge of Sibanor police station, Lamin Sanneh, representative of the governor of Western Region, as well as representatives from all the participating villages.