Dear Colleagues, I would like to concentrate on priority three of the HFA which deals with 'building knowledge innovation and education to build resilience at all levels through education' which is an excellent ideal and one which I believe can and should make one of the greatest impacts. However the way to achieve this has not been clear with the onus left to national governments to achieve. There have been publications that have highlighted good practice and in some cases these have come from governments, including the use of drills, educational material (of which there is an increasing amount of if you examine the prevention web online resources). However this does not guarantee the suitability of the resources or even if they are properly researched (i.e. accurate and giving the correct safety information), or whether they achieve their aims of helping recipients to change their behaviour and becoming safer citizens. Education should not be an all encompassing blanket, but tailored to the specific needs of the community. This means that adaptive and interactive materials that can be applied in a range of educational contexts - formal and informal, schools, clubs and societies (such as through the scout and guide movement) and community organisations. By 'interactive' this should mean engaging and allowing end users to want to become involved in practical action to help their family or community. If children and youth are challenged by resources instead of being taught a steady stream of didactic and unimaginative resources from a range of well-meaning INGO's, GO's and NGO's they are more likely to become involved in making themselves and their communities safer. However there needs to be the resources (both financial and institutional) to support their involvement. Resources for these initial types of educational engagement need not be expensive and 'commissioned' from scratch in order to meet these aims. The social network that I set up two years ago and now with 200 members has examples of short video clips and resources for schools, clubs and societies. Please feel free to view at:http://edu4drr.ning.com/ We should also endeavour to encourage the creative community more to make a wide range of media to help reinforce safety and preparedness messages. Excellent examples where this has occurred in support of educational messages in the UK is the quiet beautiful seatbelt safety advert which can be viewed at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-8PBx7isoM&sns=emThis has been viewed almost ten million times and provides an interesting talking point for anyone watching and sharing through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. In the USA, at the time of the first Southern California shakeout, a local Arts college produced a series of adverts, posters, design, multimedia and videos which were then rebroadcast across news networks in southern California. These are just the sort of message that children and youth pick up on and share with their families and if followed up in class or at clubs and societies, may begin to have an impact.
By understanding the dangers and taking part in drills and exercises, it was children and youth that demonstrated appropriate behaviour when an earthquake did occur, some months later as shown in this short video: http://edu4drr.ning.com/video/arnie-saysthe-kids-are-all

Finally, I believe that we should not be afraid to admit our own shortcomings when it comes to education for DRR. As an educator it is important to adapt and be flexible, so that if something is not working or a message or key concept not transmitted well or not understood, I can change small things so that it can be understood. I make mistakes, my students make mistakes, but we all endeavour to learn from them - I hope that as colleagues involved in this work we can also learn.

I was interested to learn of the actions that have been put in place under the Civil Contigencies Act (CCA) in the UK and how this is hoped will lead to resilience. However I made the point in the debate last week about HFA progress and I will reiterate again now....where is the education to support such political Acts? The CCA in the UK still leave most people with no real knowledge of planning for and responding to emergencies. This is partially due to the set up of such central government initiatives that the general public are largely unaware of and whose range of responsibilities include protection from terrorism alongside planning for floods, chemical spills etc. This setup tends to (still?) follow the dominant paradigm for disasters that is top-down and inherited from a somewhat militaristic view of hazard mitigation! It is useful and right that there are experts and that responders are aware of a range of hazards, but this reinforces what some psychologist may term an 'external locus of control' whereby the general public see the preparation and response to hazards as 'some one else's responsibility', rather than building and nurturing an internal locus of control that allows us mere mortals to take responsibility for our own safety! If it has been done for road safety, then why not other hazards?
Education that challenges preconceptions and allows recipients to learn that they can do much to help themselves is the missing link in the CCA. I have been developing curriculum along these lines for several years (http://edu4drr.ning.com/page/curriculum-1) with the aim of allowing students to learn to know what to do to prepare for and respond to a wide range of hazards. This includes preparing their own family go- bags which they do by talking to their family about what to include and why. These are then brought into school and assessed by their peers as to their usefulness before being taken home. This is one type of simple lesson and an example of curricular that could easily be applied to help our society to become less dependent on governments (national or local) and more independent and resilient together. However this needs to be supported by more than words but rather action and finances. We all understand the quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin, 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure' and yet we (and I include many of our governments) are still not investing in education in a meaningful way. By meaningful, I mean relevant and experiential education that allows students and the wider public to think about what they can do so be better prepared and to ACT upon it. This does not mean adding to the wealth of didactic, unchallenging and sometimes dull material that exists at this time, but involving teachers and educators to develop challenging resources and to involve schools in drills and emergency planning more actively.

I would welcome further debate about education that is priority 3 of the HFA and yet has not been mentioned in this debate this week - is education not important for both DRR and climate change? And if it is there needs to be dual bottom up and top-down approaches that allow citizens (including children and youth) to be better represented in the planning process and allowed to take ownership for their own preparation and response.

Kind Regards,

Justin Sharpe