The Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department of the European Commission (ECHO) is providing 3.28 million Euros (approx NPR 360 million) for disaster risk reduction in different parts of Nepal, under its seventh Disaster Preparedness Action Plan (DIPECHO) for South Asia.

This Action Plan intends to further reduce the vulnerability of rural populations living in areas most affected by natural disasters and those highly vulnerable to earthquakes - notably in urban settings - by increasing the preparedness and the response capacities of local communities and authorities to potential and frequent natural disasters. In the past, DIPECHO projects have focused on piloting and testing replicable community-based disaster preparedness models at grassroots level. Such actions have often been successful in increasing targeted communities' resilience and raising awareness of local stakeholders, and relevant models and tools have been developed. The projects have contributed to the five flagship initiatives of the Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium.

The current projects are implemented by four leading partners in Nepal and will be covering 13 Districts in 4 development regions, including municipalities in the Kathmandu valley. Practical Action, CARE, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Mission East have been selected as the implementing partners for the four European Commission funded projects covering a period of 18 months.

Practical Action is partnering with Mercy Corps and OXFAM to implement the project "Strengthening Actions for Fostering Resilience through Early Warning and Risk Sensitive Planning in Nepal".

Mission East is implementing the project "Bringing inclusive Community Based Disaster Risk Reduction models into remote communities of Karnali, while the " Building resilient communities and institutions for natural disasters in Far and Mid- Western Region of Nepal" is being executed by Care.

WHO is heading a consortium formed by Handicap International, Merlin and OXFAM that will focus on implementing the project "Enhancing the health sector crisis preparedness in the event of a high intensity earthquake in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal"

Finally, a South Asia regional project "INCRISD South Asia: Inclusive Community Resilience for Sustainable Disaster" implemented by Handicap International, Action Aid and Oxfam will also cover Nepal.

Overall, the projects will have around half a million direct beneficiaries.