A UNICEF-supported Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) programme was officially incorporated into the national curriculum last month, providing learning materials for school children, along with educational games and child-friendly posters.
"I'm not OK," she says, still smiling as if she's talking about the weather. "Of course I'm not. But I have another son."
Naganuma's other son, eight-year-old Koto, is missing. Koto was at Ishinomaki Okawa Elementary School the day the tsunami hit. The 108 students, as they'd practiced before, evacuated when the earthquake struck, says Naganuma.
The students had no idea the tsunami was coming. Out of the 108, 77 are presumed dead or missing. Koto is among the missing, his body still not recovered.
"Ran saw the tsunami," says Naganuma. "His brother is not coming home. So I think he understands. I can see he's pretending to be happy, so we don't worry about him."
“The teachers are incredibly sad,” Kamada said. “They know children they have cared for have died, but they are trying to get the school back on its feet.”
As the tsunami hit her school in Sendai, kindergarten teacher Junko Kamada stood in the window of a second story hall to block the children from seeing the destruction caused by the 1.5-meter wave.
Amid dirt-caked chairs, soiled books and damaged equipment, Kamada, 60, is preparing to bring the students back to the school, about a mile inland from the coast. The children will also need counseling to deal with the trauma they have experienced, psychologists say.
On one of the walls of the school the clock is frozen at 2:46 -- the time when the 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck.
Toys, bags, wood, sand and seaweed are tangled in confusion. A stool hangs from the ceiling. Backpacks were orderly placed on cupboards, where 107 students ages 6 to 12 left them on Friday, when they ran for their lives.
This comprehensive manual on school safety intends to investigate and advocate how a culture of safety can be practiced or adopted to enable a safer environment (internal and external) for the future of Bangladesh, and especially for children.
This document presents a comprehensive methodology for school safety considering school-specific hazards, such as earthquake, flood, flash flood, cyclone, landslide, and tsunami. It also focuses on fire and road hazards and considers climate change related issues. This manual is specific to Bangladesh and aims to guide teachers and students to develop a disaster management plan that includes mitigation, preparedness and response planning.
This document presents general practices of safe school construction and the retrofitting of existing school buildings through typical design and drawing of schools as developed and practised in Aceh and West Sumtra Earthquake Response programmes. The programmes aim to create greater awareness of safer school construction in new schools, while at the same time making sure that the existing school buildings are safe.
Ms. McBride, who recently returned from three weeks in Haiti, said the children she spoke with who had moved from school tents into semi-permanent structures seemed “really happy to be back at school”.
“One interesting thing about this,” Mr. Vasquez added, “is the fact that, believe it or not, children were afraid of going back to schools that were made out of bricks or reinforced concrete because they associate collapse with a certain type of construction.”
This learning video uses a simple analog setup to explore why earthquakes are so unpredictable. The setup is simple enough that students should be able to assemble and operate it on their own with a teacher’s supervision.
The Haiti Earthquake Education Poster is a product of the collaboration between TWB, the University of Montana, and the National Science Foundation. Printed copies may be available upon request at no charge.