Presentations on disaster management and forest gardens at American Center
Saturday, 29 June 2013 00:00
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The American Center will host a presentation on ‘Disaster Management: Mapping the Last Mile – Local Contingency Planning on Sri Lanka’s East Coast’ by Sarah Stodder on Monday, 1 July from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the American Center, located at #44, Galle Road, Colombo 3. ‘Mapping the Last Mile’ explores how tsunami-affected villages and local government officials interact to forge sustainable disaster resilience. Disaster preparedness at the village level — referred to in this study as the ‘last mile’ — is a nexus of top-down strategies, such as nationwide Disaster Management Centre (DMC) programs, as well as bottom-up strategies, such as locally-designed flood resistance plans.
Stodder is a Fulbright researcher conducting a project focusing on village-level disaster preparedness in the Eastern Province. She graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, DC with a B.A. in Government. Her narrative piece on the stories of her field research interviewees, ‘From Bitter Lemons: A Journey Toward Disaster Resilience in Sri Lanka,’ is her first attempt at creative nonfiction writing.
The American Center will host a presentation on ‘Gradients in Space, Time and Scale: A Resilience-based Analysis of Forest Gardens in Central Highlands Landscapes’ by Dr. Yvonne Everett on Tuesday, July 2 from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the American Center, which will present a field research based analysis of the role of forest gardens in providing ecosystem services such as food, cash income and watershed protection.
Dr. Everett is a professor of Environmental and Natural Resources Planning at Humboldt State University, California. Her masters and doctoral dissertation field research were carried out in Sri Lanka and focused on analysing forest gardens and change in the Central Highlands, and she has been returning to study forest garden land use in Sri Lanka for many years.
For free registration for the presentations and further details please contact Nowzad on Tel: 2498128 or email: [email protected]. Seating is limited and is on first-come-first-served basis.
