Support for this project will allow the Bike Scouts to provide basic safety equipment, bicycles for communication and supplies delivery, and essential training on disaster reporting and response for its community-based Volunteer Bicycle Messenger teams around the Philippines. Bike Scouts serve in some of the most disaster-vulnerable areas of our country that's ranked with the highest disaster risk among 193 countries around the world with 74% of the population is susceptible to their impact.
The Philippines has the highest disaster risk among 193 countries around the world as of 2022. At least 60% of the Philippines' land area is exposed to multiple hazards and 74% of the population is susceptible to their impact due to the location. The Philippines sits on the "Ring of Fire" that creates risk from volcanoes and earthquakes, and the country is also within the most active tropical cyclone basin in the world that brings at least 20 severe typhoons every year.
For the past 10 years the Bike Scouts have effectively provided immediate assistance to severely affected areas through our local Volunteer Bicycle Messenger teams that provide an alternative means of access to supplies and communication for people and places isolated by disasters. We will be able to raise the quality of response and help that Bike Scouts teams can provide, especially for life-saving needs, with teams that are local and already on the ground long before disasters occur.
The project will help create a stronger presence for the Bike Scouts as an active and effective community of Volunteer Bicycle Messenger teams for disaster response around the Philippines and will create even stronger awareness about the value of community-based resilience, local climate change action as a way to mitigate disasters, and participation in the work that help provide genuine local ability to survive in the face of severe disasters that are guaranteed to happen every year.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
