History

Brief History of CEDAP-NCPDP

National Centre for Peoples’-Action in Disaster Preparedness (NCPDP)-India is a platform working on disaster risk reduction as a part of the Centre for Eco-centric Development And People’s-Action (CEDAP) which is a not-for-profit organization. CEDAP was registered in 1990 at Ahmedabad by a professional couple (Rupal Desai – an architect and Rajendra Desai – a structural engineer). After working in U.S.A. for over a decade in mainstream, they turned their attention to the softer technologies that serve people in a sustainable manner for shelter, water, sanitation and energy.

From its very inception, CEDAP was committed to the development, demonstration and transfer of technologies, which were sustainable, viable and easy to replicate mainly in non-urban areas. Between its inception and creation of NCPDP platform it carried out a few projects on appropriate technology alternatives for shelter with support from national level funding organizations such as DST and CAPART.

National Centre for People’s-Action in Disaster Preparedness (NCPDP) was created with a focus on disaster preparedness in October 2000 as an outcome of seven years of sustained intervention by its two honorary directors in earthquake-ravaged regions of Latur, Jabalpur and Chomoli in India.

The disaster aftermaths clearly pointed at a desperate need to put to use the expertise of CEDAP to intervene on the socio technical front of the disaster risk reduction through the focus on the building technologies that are effective, viable and sustainable.

NCPDP’s first challenge was to help the local administration carryout panic control through community meetings in the aftermath of a series of low intensity tremors in the city of Bhawnagar in Gujarat in October 2000 that resulted in to some local damage. NCPDP was effectively able to do its job through educating people about these earthquakes, including why damage occurs, and what people need to do to ensure their own safety.

Before long it faced a major challenge in the aftermath of January 2001 Kutchh Earthquake. For next four years it worked with the state disaster management authority as well as various NGOs with the primary focus of strengthening people through building their capacity to face future disasters.
It has worked with the disaster affected communities in the aftermath of various disasters such as the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, 2008 floods in Bihar, 2011 earthquake in Sikkim, 2013 Himalayan Tsunami in Uttarakhand, and 2015 earthquake in Nepal to build their capacity.