Jointly organized by the United Nations Office for Disaster and Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Global Education and Training Institute (GETI), the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) under the framework of its Cities Project, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), the “Transitioning to Complex Risk Management and Resilient Urban Futures: Harnessing South-South Cooperation and Learning from COVID-19” training workshop consisted of four online sessions and one end- of-course assessment and was held between 23 August and 13 September 2022.
The first session, on 23 August, focused on providing participants with an introduction to disaster risk reduction, public emergency preparedness, and South-South and triangular cooperation (SSTC).
The second session, led by UNDRR on 30 August, focused on the utilization of the Public Health System Resilience Addendum (PHA) of the Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities in strengthening cities’ disaster risk reduction planning and implementation.
The third session on 6 September, led by WHO and PAHO, introduced the whole of society and multi-sectoral/cross-sectoral approaches to all-hazard health emergency preparedness in urban settings. The final session took place on 13 September focused on cities’ innovative experiences in transitioning to living with COVID-19 and managing complex risk scenarios, featuring speakers from Bangladesh, Chile, and Thailand.
Overall, the training received over 2,700 registrations from 175 countries and territories, and more than 1,300 participants joined the sessions live from 590 cities and districts in over 140 countries and territories with close to equal gender participation. About 35% of participants were from national and local governments, 22% from academic and research institutes, 16% from NGO/CSOs, 12% from the UN and inter-governmental organizations, and 11% from the private sector. At the end of the course, 795 people responded to the online post-webinar survey. Among these respondents, 98% reported having gained knowledge on SSTC, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and public health applicable to their work, and more than 95% of participants would like to be part of the “South-South Cities Clusters” platform and collaborate with UNDRR, UNOSSC, WHO and PAHO on future activities. 360 participants passed final assessments and obtained the certificate of completion.
The training has been transformed into a self-paced online course, which is available free of charge to anyone interested on WHO’s OpenWHO.org learning platform. The course takes approximately 4.5 hours to complete and participants have the opportunity to earn certificates and digital badges to share their achievements.