Heads up for disasters

Educational materials and references on natural disaster preparedness presented at the workshop.

When a magnitude 8.9 earthquake hit Indonesia's Aceh province at 6:58am on December 26, 2004, no one was prepared for the awesome consequences - tsunamic waves, massive loss of life, physical destruction and emotional devastation.

The event was a concussive wake-up call to those whose lives were affected. It also pressed international communities to pool their technical resources and to collaborate on the creation of a uniform safety response to lessen the consequences of a similar cataclysm in the future.

Eighteen months later, there is the regional workshop on Education for Natural Disaster Preparedness in Asia-Pacific, a sub-regional project coordinated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) in Bangkok. The project aims to develop education materials that will help to prepare local interest groups for disaster anticipation, recognition and prevention through sample case studies of six Asia-Pacific countries, namely Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Maldives and Thailand.

The "lesson that I learned from the [2004 tsunami] was just how difficult it is to coordinate so many people who wanted to help," says Elias, Education for Sustainable Development programme specialist at Unesco Bangkok. "One thing this project can do is to highlight the input from many people, so that when regional or local disaster management plans are being prepared, they are more aware of solutions and contributions that others have made." The project, says Elias, did not set out to produce materials to be spread throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Nor did it seek to address every kind of natural disaster or to examine the role of each interest group.

Project highlights

Dr Hendrawan Soetanto presents the folding pictures and simulation game.

Each of the six countries developed education materials that are locally relevant and culturally appropriate in each country. Indonesia, the country most affected by the devastating earthquake and its aftermath, developed a set of folding pictures and a simulation game that involves natural disasters as two educational resources for schools.

"While Indonesia is prone to natural disasters, no education for natural disaster preparedness has been included in school curricula from primary to tertiary education," says Professor Hendrawan Soetanto from Indonesia's University of Brawijaya.

"People must be able to understand the warning signs and other factors that influence natural disasters," he says, adding that the resource materials would teach them what to do before, during, and after a disaster strike. The folding pictures and simulation game will, for the first time, bring the knowledge of natural disaster preparedness to school-aged children.

The set of pictures - which features earthquakes, floods, landslides, and volcanic eruptions - is designed to be instructional and participatory material for 12-17 year-olds. While focusing on the pictures, teachers can encourage students to discuss appropriate actions to take in each type of natural disaster.

Disaster preparedness presented at the workshop

Similar methods are applied to the simulation game, which teaches basic understanding and prevention of hurricanes and tsunamis, in addition to other disasters. The board game is typical, in that students take turns and collect points if they answer disaster-related questions correctly.

However, Professor Soetanto acknowledges that it will be difficult to incorporate knowledge of natural disaster preparedness into formal education because Indonesia's existing primary and secondary curricula are already massive. As a result, these two edutainment materials, he says, will be included as extra-curricula activities for students.

Thailand, on the other hand, chose video as an instructional medium and targets people at the community level as the principle audience. The knowledge of natural disasters, says Dr Ampai Harakunarak, director of Thailand Environment Institute's Environmental Education and Human Resources Development Centre, has already been incorporated in all levels of the national curriculum. In addition, the country has many non-formal documentary materials that instruct citizens what to do in the event of a natural disaster.

To Dr Ampai, most of these existing educational materials are not very relevant to the local communities. This type of knowledge is therefore not immediately usable, she adds. "Emergency information is only useful when we can immediately recall it during critical times, so that we know the proper steps to take when a disaster strikes."

With these given circumstances, Dr Ampai's team chose to focus the video on a specific audience group in the northern Chiang Dao district, where mudslides regularly occur. The video is narrated in a northern Thai dialect and not only teaches villagers what to do after mudslides occur, but also informs them of possible preventive measures.

"We don't expect the video to cover all the possible scenarios and contingencies, but at least it can help to reinforce and build continual awareness in the community," she says.

This is the initial step. Whether it is the video, posters, folding pictures, or simulation games, some of these educational materials presented at the workshop will be developed further to reach a broader audience. After all, it is everyone's duty to protect and nurture the environment, for people play a catalytic role in causing - or preventing - many natural disasters.

For more information about the Education for Natural Disaster Preparedness in Asia-Pacific project, contact Derek Elias at 02 391 0577 or visit www.unescobkk.org/esd . To comment on this or any other article in Learning Post, contact: learningpost@bangkokpost.co.th .