Earthquake Preparedness Forum held in American Chamber of Commerce Hall, April 26, 2010.

About Business Sector Preparedness

In 2005, CNDR started to advocate business continuity planning (BCP) among the business sector in the advent of an avian influenza pandemic. It was October of that year when CNDR organized a forum calling for business sector preparedness to the effects of influenza pandemic. Since then, CNDR carried on BCP as its advocacy.

Since then, the network has teamed up with several CNDR members in organizing forums and symposia   advocating business continuity and business sector preparedness. Some of the activities conducted to this end were BCP Summit on Avian Influenza wherein speakers from World Health Organization and Asian Development Bank provided insights on pandemic influenza and its economic impacts, screening of the movie, Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America that depicted the pandemic in a USA setting, forum on the “Medical and Security Aspects of Business Continuity Planning. CNDR in partnership with the American Chamber Foundation Philippines Inc. (ACFPI) just recently held its first earthquake preparedness forum entitled Towards Safer Cities: An Earthquake Preparedness Forum.

CNDR also focuses on forging Public-Private Partnerships. The Public-Private Partnership (PPP) component was   introduced during the second phase of the ACCORD project.  This was deemed consistent with the support of ACCORD-2 for the Delhi Declaration on DRR and the Hyogo Framework for Action, which underscored the crucial need to form linkages and partnerships, including those between the public and private sectors of society, in order to extend the scope and reach of DRR activities.  Such partnerships were seen to enable the private sector to become more involved in emergency preparedness and DRR initiatives in communities, while putting corporate social responsibility (CSR) into practice and bringing business continuity plans to fruition.

CNDR is also in the process of setting up the emergency preparedness plans of its members. As a pilot activity, CNDR assisted Smart Communications in holding its nationwide disaster-preparedness planning workshops. Workshops were conducted among North and Central Luzon employees late last year, followed by another one for those in the Visayas and Mindanao and just recently, South Luzon and NCR.  The said activities are conducted to further prepare the company to respond to various disasters and deliver timely and efficient emergency assistance to communities and partners when needed.

Business sector preparedness  is one of CNDR’s thrusts for the year, and the years to come, to continue advocating BCP to make sure that the business community is able to respond to the needs of its employees, deliver critical services, and correspondingly, able to respond to communities, in times of disasters.

Read write-up on Earthquake Preparedness Forum.