Atul Loke/Panos for Oxfam America

Disaster situations make the poor community more vulnerable and affect the backbone of their socio-economic status. Participatory performance emphasises working with and from the affected community's own reality, and choosing their own modes of expression. Local people replace outside scriptwriters, illustrators, editors, directors and actors and become actively involved in creating and exploring solutions to a real life situation. Participatory method will encourage the participation of the community in the decision-making, implementation, monitoring and evaluation phases of relief and recovery projects. Hence this idea was conceived to empower the community through traditional folk media on disaster risks and vulnerability. Local folk media can include music, local art forms, local theatre, puppetry, drawing or dance. Many affected communities have their own traditional media forms to express themselves.

The pilot project is proposed to be carried out with 10 villages of Ramnad District, Tamil Nadu, under coastal context where cyclones, floods and tsunamis are the disaster phenomenons.

• Understanding the Communication needs of the community, stakeholders and the service providers with special reference to disaster risks and vulnerability
• Integrating local folk media in the disaster preparedness strategy
• Developing and moderating folk media troupes and formats to discuss the message related to risks and vulnerability and thereby increasing understanding of disaster risk reduction practices and enhance their effectiveness

• A package of contextualized traditional folk media formats and messages to impart disaster risk reduction literacy.
• A localised folklore unit involving community trained taking up campaigns for disaster risk reduction literacy.
• Process documentation of the entire pilot interventions in a video documentary format.