Monday, 5 February 2001

Int'l Red Cross workshop opens at Clark
CLARK FIELD, Pampanga - Some participants from various countries started
arriving here yesterday afternoon for the seven-day international disaster
preparedness workshop starting on Feb. 4 at the Fontana Resort and Country
Club here.
Participants in the workshop, hosted by the Geneva-based International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, were scheduled to share
and reflect on their country and regional-level experience in planning and
implementing disaster preparedness programs in the field.

The Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC), which is coordinating the
workshop here, announced that most of the participants will come from Red
Cross Federation headquarters in Geneva and the Red Cross regional offices
in Bangkok, Thailand, New Delhi, India, Suva, Fuji, Budapest and Hungary.

Other delegates will come from Papua New Guinea, Cambodia, Turkey, Sudan,
Bangladesh, Mozambique, Vietnam, Sto. Domingo, Britain, Philippines and
Denmark.

Secretary Richard Gordon of the Department of Tourism (DoT) also arrived
here to meet the delegates to the workshop. He said that the workshop was
designed to provide participants with a clearer context for their work in
terms of the global disaster preparedness environment and of the Red Cross'
disaster preparedness policy and strategt up to year 2010.

Gordon, PNRC governor, has been involved in various disaster-control
operations and relief distribution projects during calamities in the
Philippines.

Gordon said that the workshop will focus on the value of disaster
preparedness. (Fred Roxas)