A program called “Community Mediators” seeks to strengthen the link between neighborhood organizations and the municipal State in cases of emergencies of any type, such as a fire, the need for an ambulance, a criminal situation or weather contingencies.
Neighborhood organizations face various problems daily without having the minimum necessary resources, which makes coordination between them and governments difficult. This is added to the lack of training in emergency situations, which exposes them to extreme vulnerability and risk and not knowing how to act at the time of any emergency.
That is why the program that is beginning to be debated in the Control Commission of the Rosario Council would consist of providing constant updating training on mediation and prevention of violence, institutional and legal resources for the peaceful resolution of conflicts.
The councilor who promoted the project, Julia Irigoitía, told Mirador that “community violence is a municipal responsibility, there is a lot to do in preventive matters, and the worst exposure of people is to leave them alone in a critical context.”
Civil, social and religious organizations will be trained and learn actions in order to contribute to the reduction of levels of violence in the city, and in this way they will become community mediators for the prevention of violence. These organizations will receive a cell phone linked directly to the CIOR and 911 to alert them in case of different emergencies such as a fire, the need for an ambulance or any other emergency situation that occurs and requires the intervention of municipal personnel.
Any type of neighborhood organization (neighborhood, social or sports clubs) may register; the enforcement authority will be the Secretariat of Human Development, and will also have links with provincial areas such as 911 and the Ministry of Justice and Security.
The reference case in the city of Tigre
Councilor Irigoitía’s project file highlights that “one of the most important factors of any security system is the participation of citizens,” and in that sense she exemplifies the case of “Tiger Alert 2.0,” a system of that Buenos Aires city that allows the local operations center to be alerted through various forms, places and technologies, to dispatch from there the assistance of police or other security forces, municipal control mobiles, ambulances, firefighters, Civil Defense or whatever is necessary before each event.
By incorporating organizations into a system similar to Tigre’s, it also seeks to lead in the medium term to an accurate record and systematization of the situations addressed for the management of new public emergency and security policies.
“What we took from the Alerta Tigre program is the section on neighborhood leaders, specifically, which aims to provide technological and training resources to organizations and the people who are in charge of them. The intention is that they have more tools to detect, anticipate and prevent conflict situations, intervene in emergencies and have skills to address community violence from a preventive logic, with direct contact and a rapid intervention route in relation to municipal areas. and provincial,” he highlighted.
The Community Mediators against Violence program will be debated first in the Control and Coexistence Commission, and then go through the Budget and Finance Commission, and the municipal Human Development Secretariat would be its enforcement authority.
ROSARY BEADS
More news on this topic
