Abstract:

The strengthening of capacities for building resilience is a pending task in coastal areas of Ecuador. Resilience is worked as a process to promote a culture of prevention and preparedness against natural hazards. One of the weaknesses detected, through a participatory diagnosis, in a coastal community has been the disinterested concern to face natural disasters by not having contingency plans or warning measures. The academy can be an inclusive actor in this process, demonstrated in the development of the community intervention project "Empowerment of community capacities to improve the capacity of resilience to extreme events and threats of marine and anthropogenic origin with affectation in the coastal zone", with the participation of teachers and students. This paper aims to describe the methodology used to enable the implementation of a culture of community resilience with the formation and strengthening of community risk management committees as agents of management, planning and first response. This paper has qualitative methodology, descriptive and ethnographic, because the problematic situation of the community is identified, putting it in evidence so that it is allowed to work in the empowerment of the topic in the community. A questionnaire was applied as an instrument to collect information about attitudes, knowledge and practices regarding risks due to tsunamis, as well as in-depth interviews on the subject with key actors. One of the conclusive results was that only 35% of the surveyed population feels vulnerable by the tsunami threat and 75% do not feel prepared for a catastrophic event and the most dangerous result is that 2% is not interested, which has allowed taking action to design an intervention strategy between the academy, government agencies and community.

Keywords:

Resilience, capacity empowerment, Risks, Threats.