Photo Blog – Children protecting communities against natural disasters

Today is International Disaster Risk Reduction Day, and here at World Vision we have been teaching children around the world about the importance of knowing what to do when disaster strikes.

Here is a snapshot of what children are learning from World Vision, from Mongolia to Haiti and beyond.

Pakistan

After noticing a shop on fire in their village, eight year old Talal (on the right) and Zeshan were able to put into action their newly gained knowledge from World Vision training of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR).  “I learnt from training that whenever you see fire, first try to find out its cause. If the fire is caused by short circuit then we need to put it out with sand not water.” Within five minutes of finding the fire they had controlled it, saving the shop and nearby homes.

During the same training session, Sidra and Shehla are drawing an evacuation plan in case it floods.  Shehla says, “Now we have no fear of floods. We will work with our elders to save our families and relatives during any emergency.” Sidra says, “We have drawn a canal that is overflowed due to heavy rain and may cause flood in our area.”

Mongolia

Mongolia suffers the worst air pollution in the world. Living in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, is like smoking the equivalent 4-5 packs of cigarettes a day. Lung and respiratory disease, coronary disease, and neo-natal sickness rates are more than twice as high as they are in countryside. World Vision is providing families with stoves that emit less smoke to help combat this problem.

Myanmar

Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar in May 2008 and claimed the lives of over 130,000 people. Following this disaster, the community of San Pya village formed Village Disaster Management Committee with local authorities, village leaders, church leaders, school teachers, students and villagers.
The disaster committee also organises the activities such as growing trees and repairing village drainage systems, many of the committed members are women who have also trained as midwives.

In Wae Gyui Dauk village in Myanmar, this is home for two girls, ages 4 and 6. Their house is regularly surrounded by floods and without a boat the children cannot go to school. Community members take part in regular drills to help identify particularly vulnerable families.

These primary school children, from Pha Yar Ngu village school in Myanmar are practicing their earthquake drill. The children, aging from 6 to 9 years, have alarms to signal fire, cyclones, flooding, or earthquake alerts. They are given survival strategies and encouraged to prepare their parents.  Each senior child has junior students to care for and they all know where they need to go for safety.

Haiti

Thousands of people lost their homes in the earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12th, 2010, and many moved into camps that popped up all over the city. These camps do not have fresh water or sanitation and thus disease is rife. To help remedy this problem, World Vision hired an acting troupe called Compagnie Zoflanbo to spread messages of proper hygiene and simple ways to stay healthy through music, dance and acting.

Philippines

Children in Bohol (Visayas) and Mandaluyong (Luzon) in the Philippines taking part in Child-Friendly Disaster Risk Reduction training, where they are taught to identify the disaster prone areas in their community through hazard maps where they plot the season calendar Together with with school teachers, firefighters, engineering staff, community patrol teams, and village leaders, the children learned how to make their own hazard map using crayons, colored papers, and art. Based on these activities, they can contribute to reduce risks and mitigate disasters in theircommunity prone to typhoons, flooding, and fire.

Third grader Ralf Daniel, 10, lives in a far-flung community in Samar, in the eastern part of Visayas Island, Philippines, his family is dependent upon the family’s farming income. However in June 2011 a flood caused major agricultural damage, decreasing farm productivity. World Vision provided relief assistant to affected families. A week later Ralf Daniel was given the opportunity to represent their region and join the annual National Children’s Congress organised by World Vision. “It was very timely. The theme of the congress was about climate change and environmental protection.”

Local people in Nhu Xuan district of Vietnam used the same sort of DRR techniques to help them to evacuate more quickly and safely last month when heavy rains caused severe flooding last month.