TLResilience
Our proposal to AusAid's ICCAI grants program

OzGREEN Village Environmental Action Planning Program
Find out more about the exisiting OzGREEN model

UN Development Program article on Timor-Leste
Read the full article in News Quarterly

Development Marketplace 2009 Winners

Oxfam International Youth Partnerships

Engineers Without Borders: Hamoris Timor Oan partnership

Australian Red Cross East Timor Development Program

AusAid Australia–Timor-Leste Country Strategy

Green Cross has developed an exciting partnership able to deliver large-scale water security, disaster preparedness and youth climate adaptation action in Timor-Leste.

We are raising funds to support this initiative which can be downloaded here.

Timor-Leste climate adaptation challenges

Timor-Leste is exposed to flooding, cyclones, drought, rising seas, storm surge and changing climatic patterns.

Regional trends point to higher atmospheric and ocean temperatures and increased climate variability.

Climate scientists foresee a risk of more intense rainfall with prolonged dry periods, and more intense severe weather events.

Infrastructure was devastated during prolonged conflicts with Indonesia, with up to 75% of water infrastructure destroyed. Infant mortality rates are among the highest in the world, partly resulting from contaminated water supplies and increasing water-borne disease risk.

Because 50% of Timor-Leste's population is under the age of 18, empowering young people to become active citizens and to embrace the climate adaptation agenda is vital.

The "TLResilience" project

Community partnerships are a powerful way to deliver impact if they integrate core capabilities of participating groups.

Green Cross Australia has pulled together five NGOs that, working together, can deliver clean drinking water to 14,000 rural Timorese people while improving disaster response skills, and enabling young people to participate in climate adaptation activities including reforestation of local river catchments.

Our partnership proposes to use a village planning approach used by OzGREEN in India, PNG and the Oecusse province of Timor Leste to empower another twenty rural Timorese villages to implement their own climate adaptation plans supported by Australian Engineers Without Borders volunteers. Supported by youth engagement projects led by local Red Cross and Oxfam programs, this initiative has the potential to deliver clean drinking water, healthy river catchments, and severe weather resilience capacity building.