In Focus: Lorna P. Victoria, the "Mother of CBDRRM modules"

Ms. Lorna P. Victoria was born in the Philippines on August 17, 1953. She took up Sociology in college and afterwards she went to graduate school taking up Master of Arts in Urban and Regional Planning. She is a licensed Environmental Planner.

She is a community based disaster risk management specialist having worked with the Citizens’ Disaster Response Center and the Center for Disaster Preparedness, two non-government organizations in the Philippines that are recognized for their pioneering work in community-based disaster risk reduction and management (CBDRRM). Her specialization is in training and instructional materials development. She has written several training manuals and also has published several papers all in relation to CBDRRM.

Lorna Victoria had demonstrated genuine commitment to the cause of the marginalized, the vulnerable people, throughout her career. She has spent her entire lifetime working for social change, for development that would benefit people, for development that has disaster risk reduction and management as part of its DNA, for development that is sustainable and just. She recognizes that good governance is key to development and thus has been actively sharing her knowledge and expertise to people in the communities, and to the local and national government. She also actively participates in international and regional conferences on disaster risk reduction to bring in the voice of civil society organizations to the table. She believes that working for development means working actively both at the bottom and at the top thus in a day she can be talking with people in the community and later she would be talking with policy makers and/or government executives.

Recognizing that good governance rest on good laws, she spearheaded the formation of the Philippine Disaster Management Forum and later the Disaster Risk Reduction Network Philippines (DRRNetPhils), both civil society networks that pushed for the passage of development- oriented disaster risk reduction and management law in the Philippines. Her development orientation plus her years of experience in community based disaster risk management would enhance the campaign by integrating disaster risk reduction in the global development framework.

In recognition of her leading role in disaster risk reduction amongst the civil society network, she was invited by the World Bank to sit as a member of the Global Forum on Disaster Risk Reduction Results Management Council (2010-2011).

She is a well sought speaker in fora, conferences and trainings here in the Philippines and abroad. She is currently serving as a member of Center for Disaster Preparedness' Board of Trustees, and is the Regional Representative in the GNDR Global Board for Southeast Asia.

Source: http://www.beyond2015.org/sites/default/files/Lorna%20P.%0P.%20Victoria.pdf