The Asia Pacific Regional Workshop on School Education and Disaster Risk Reduction welcomed 304 participants from 24 countries from the Asia and Pacific region. The goal of the workshop was to make a contribution towards reducing the vulnerability of school children to disasters and helping to decrease the loss of lives. It also aimed to improve the resilience of school communities struck by disasters, or in hazard prone areas.

Mindful of the existing key on-going global and regional processes on disaster risk reduction (see Annex), the workshop took stock of initiatives, good practices and processes developed by Governments, in-country actors and regional partners in the area of disaster risk reduction education. Also significant was the need to build on existing and ongoing processes, bearing in mind a gender-sensitive perspective. Key recommendations emerged, addressed to all stakeholders, on the following priority areas:

1. Integrating Disaster Risk Reduction into School Education.
2. Strengthening Disaster Risk Reduction Education for Community Resilience.
3. Making Schools Safer.
4. Empowering Children for Disaster Risk Reduction.

1. Integrating Disaster Risk Reduction into School Education

• Continue to work towards the inclusion and mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction into school curricula and into pre-service teacher education;
• Encourage Education departments to develop a concrete policy in support of the efforts of the curriculum divisions to integrate disaster risk reduction into school curricula and to enhance teachers' know-how and skills in delivering effectively the disaster risk reduction concepts;
• Pursue an inventory and assessment of provincial and national programmes and policies for integrating DRR into school curricula and teacher education and training;
• Develop, apply and evaluate a wide range of locally relevant, innovative and interactive teaching and learning approaches and materials in partnership with the broadest participation of stakeholders for delivery of DRR education;
• Develop strategies for formal and non-formal education on disaster risk reduction, assist in the implementation of these strategies, and share experiences and develop consensus at the regional level on the replication of these strategies elsewhere;
• Design educational strategies and materials specifically for children with various disabilities, with their participation, and in accordance with their needs;
• Undertake "Priority Implementation Partnerships" (involving children, parents, school teachers and DRR specialists) at national and provincial levels between the National Disaster Management Offices (NDMOs), Ministries of Education and their curriculum development departments and teachers training institutes, as well as civil society stakeholders; and
• Agree on success and performance indicators to monitor the adequacy, effectiveness and impact of integrating disaster risk reduction into education curriculum and request the Education Task Force, under UN/ISDR's leadership, to conduct an effective monitoring and evaluation of activities undertaken.
  

2. Strengthening Disaster Risk Reduction Education for Community Resilience

• Strengthen participatory mechanisms to involve communities in formal and non-formal disaster risk reduction education, taking into account indigenous knowledge;
• Research on traditional wisdom and skills should be promoted and properly documented for educational purposes and use in schools;
• Strengthen integrated approaches for both formal and non-formal education strategies to ensure mutually-supportive programmes on building community resilience;
• Extend disaster risk reduction education from schools to communities by involving parents;
• Research impact of formal and non-formal education efforts to better inform, motivate and prepare people in the community;
• Reach out to children who are not in schools, including children with disabilities;
• Adopt standardized methodologies to assess socio-economic impacts of disasters to ensure effective inclusion of the poor, disadvantaged groups and gender dimensions for more effective DRR and education strategies;
• Develop new methodologies for communicating the socio-economic impacts of disasters to the public as well as to policy makers;
• Ensure sufficient and qualified human resources are in place to increase the impact of education on disaster risk reduction; and
• Use socio-economic impact assessment to influence decision makers towards increased investments into disaster risk reduction education.
  

3. Making Schools Safer

• Every new school must be safe from disasters and should be built according to safe construction standards without delay;
• Conduct an assessment and prioritize existing schools for retrofitting at the national and local levels;
• Update the minimum standards for the construction and operation of school buildings to incorporate disaster mitigation, allow for flexibility to suit local conditions and to ensure that new school construction and disaster management planning includes the application of "accessibility standards" for students and staff with disabilities;
• Develop minimum standards on safe school building when using local materials and resources;
• Strengthen accountability mechanisms and advocate for the creation of national programmes for school safety, where needed, to ensure that all new and existing, public and private schools are life-safe from all hazard threats;
• Ensure schools can serve as bases for post-disaster shelters for school children, the community, adults, people with disabilities, and provide in parallel alternative sites for educational continuity with school-based disaster management planning, training and drills;
• Train personnel for multi-hazard disaster resistant school planning, design, monitoring, maintenance, inspection and approval at community- and all levels of government;
• Facilitate the development of tools and guidelines for safe construction considering sub-regional characteristics, mindful of the need for national level adaptation;
• Use national budget and infrastructure protection resources to make schools safe, with no funding cut from education sector; and
• Mandatory declaration of schools as "Zone of Safety" by the UN General Assembly.
  

4. Empowering Children for Disaster Risk Reduction

• Facilitate channels for child consultation and participation at community, district, national and international levels, through fora involving children and key decision-makers;
• Develop child-led disaster risk reduction and response cadres in and out of school at the community level, including from individual homes, as part of child care safety and protection learning;
• Train teachers, implementers to foster child-to-child learning strategies to ensure sustainability of the programmes;
• Invest on expanding children's knowledge and skills especially in recovery situations;
• Provide the opportunity for the development of child councils or parliaments to foster child based advocacy and decision making; and
• Special outreach efforts should be made to reach children with disabilities, their teachers and parents, both in mainstreamed school settings and special schools.
  

5. National and Regional Approaches

The Education Task Force (ETF) as well as national and regional organizations working in the field of Disaster Risk Reduction Education are committed to support the above recommendations through advocacy, the collation, analysis and dissemination of good practices, the identification of gaps and challenges, and by ensuring that the issues are acted upon at the local, national and regional levels and are duly considered and reflected at the global level by the Global Knowledge and Education Platform. The Education Task Force should expand its membership and undertake programmes in support of this action agenda through its members and a wide network of actors at the local, national and regional levels engaged in DRR Education, building on existing on-going and forthcoming DRR Education related initiatives.

Specific activities identified for action at the regional level include:

• Collect, catalogue, evaluate and disseminate educational materials in interactive and participatory online portal or information clearing house;
• Encourage consensus-based messages and sharing, translation and localization of good materials wherever appropriate;
• Establish a web-working group on disaster risk reduction and education;
• Encourage and support national task forces on disaster risk reduction and school education to work with education sector working groups to promote policy changes towards the integration of DRR in national education systems; and
• Advocate for national programmes of school safety and disaster risk reduction education, and country-specific recommendations, through regional and sub-regional workshops to get strong commitments from government and develop and promote tools and guidelines;
• Develop guidance materials for governments and partner organizations on integration of DRR into school curricula and teacher education;
• Assess national efforts related to integrating Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) into school and teacher education curricula and training and collect and disseminate good practices;
• Elaborate "scope and sequence" of disaster risk reduction education content; and
• Research impact of formal and non-formal education efforts to better inform, motivate and prepare people in the community.
  

The Workshop requested the UN/ISDR, on behalf of the Education Task Force (ETF), to facilitate the recognition and consideration of the recommendations of the Asia Pacific Regional Workshop on School Education and Disaster Risk Reduction as part of planned regional and global processes including the Second Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Reduction (7-8 November 2007, Delhi, India), through the High Level Roundtable on Regional Cooperation and other thematic sessions, and at the Ministerial Conference on Education for Disaster Risk Reduction in Geneva in 2008.

    
Download the announcement (pdf, 210kb) and the workshop report (pdf, 50kb)