The Ghana Red Cross Society (GRCS)in collaboration with the Swiss Red Cross has donated some mango seedlings to Community Disaster Preparedness and Response Teams (CDPRTs) volunteers in four districts across the Upper East Region.

The districts are; Binduri, Nabdam, Bongo districts and Kessena Nankana Municipal.

Presenting the seedlings to the volunteers, Mr Paul Wooma, the Upper East Regional Manager of the GRCS, said his outfit had embarked on a programme dubbed Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), to train the volunteers as Community Disaster Preparedness and Response Teams (CDPRTs).

He said the volunteers were taken through a series of trainings to identify hazard prevalence and response strategies, to prepare them and their communities on disaster risk response, to ensure that the impact of disaster on the people and their livelihoods were reduced.

"The volunteers, identified tree growing as one of the ways to reduce the impact of windstorm and other climate change effects, yet it was hardly practised in the communities, so they appealed to the project to assist them with economically viable trees.

"We decided to assist each of the four districts with 500 mango seedlings to plant in their homestead to serve as windbreak and also as a source of livelihood", he said.

Mr Wooma commended the volunteers for their sacrificial work over the years, saying that the mango seedlings was a gesture to spur them on.

The Regional Manager told the volunteers that huge sums of investments were made in getting the seedlings and transporting it over to their doorsteps hence volunteers should reciprocate the gesture by nurturing the trees properly.

He was thankful to the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) for collaborating with them in their activities to alleviate the suffering of humanity.

Mr Cletus Bugbil, the Binduri District organizer of CDPRTs was grateful to GRCS and pledged to supervise the tree growing to ensure that the trees were well nurtured.

Mr Bugbil appealed for farm tools such as wheelbarrows, shovels, life jacket, pickaxe and others to help them in their farming activities as well as growing the trees.

The DRR project also distributed 800 face masks across the four districts to aid in the fight against the novel Coronavirus.