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Climate change severely and disproportionately impacts Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Caribbean and around the world. Catastrophic hurricanes and flooding continue to intensify and occur more frequently in the Caribbean, requiring new and highly localized approaches to traditional natural disaster response. Preparedness, response, and recovery must move past treating these as unpredictable singular events and instead build long-term resilience to these intensifying seasonal hazards and their underlying causes. Caribbean SIDS, like The Bahamas, need resilience strategies that will enable these countries and their largely coastal communities to survive and thrive through the climate crisis. It is vital that we help the most vulnerable populations to plan, prepare and manage for change, thereby reducing the impacts of these challenges and increasing the resiliency of these vulnerable communities.
This project, The Caribbean Resilience Initiative (CRI) led by Allison Dworschak of Mercy Corps, aims to improve the long-term resilience of communities in Caribbean SIDS to the impacts of climate change.
CRI focuses on Community Disaster Risk Reduction through four programmatic sectors:
CRI’s SPARK 2.0 was designed to build digital and financial literacy, as well as business technology skills for project participants, with a focus on encouraging and fostering the relationship with participants investing in ecosystem protection. It targets the most vulnerable among the Agriculture/Food Production, Fisheries and Tourism-Adjacent industries, and aims to reach 16 Micro and Small Businesses with business development grants and training, impacting 320 people in The Bahamas.
Over the course of 12 months, CRI plans to launch SPARK 2.0 across islands in The Bahamas, supporting 16 small businesses and impacting roughly 400 people (including employees, household of the business owner and regular patrons).
