About Aapdamitra

A Government Agency in this modernised e-set up, how best alerts or equipped it may be, we live in an era of unpredictable different type of disasters looming around with global warming, thus in ground-reality the first response to any kind of disaster or calamity has to come from the Community before any Government Agency support reaches or outside help get galvanised. 

The word ‘Aapdamitra’ in English translation means ‘Friends-in-Disaster’.

Flood is one of the major natural disasters that have affected India in a large scale, and this has increased during the recent years due to unpredictable weather and climate change phenomena. With the history of flood disaster cases experienced in India, a recent being Chennai Floods -2015 where it has caused a huge loss to the nation, a need to strengthen the local community so as to respond to the disaster effectively, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has introduced the AAPDA MITRA Training- a training for Community Volunteers to response to flood disaster.

Nagaland in recent years has also witnessed inundated cases of flood especially in the plain area which has cause huge losses to properties, livelihood systems, infrastructure and public utilities. Therefore in line with National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), the Nagaland State Disaster Management Authority (NSDMA) has embark upon training of AAPDA MITRA volunteers selected from the vulnerable communities.

The Training aims to empower the community Volunteer with the skills they would need to respond to their community’s immediate needs in the aftermath of disaster thereby enabling them to undertake basic relief and rescue tasks during emergency situations in floods, flash-floods and urban flooding. Thus, the Aapda Mitra are able-bodied community volunteers trained to respond to disaster in case of flood.

Nagaland State Disaster Management Authority (NSDMA) in collaboration with Central Training Institute (CTI) Home Guards & Civil Defence and supported by National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has successfully conducted the Pilot project and now anticipating more of this training .