The need
Safer schools are the beginning of safer communities. Expanding the base of school safety programmes is a good way to further risk reduction goals.
How we helped
Beginning in 2012, SEEDS became a technical partner to Plan’s school safety programme, bringing in a disaster management and risk reduction perspective. This included enhancing the knowledge of comprehensive school safety; demonstrating non-structural mitigation; and developing a design for retrofitting of one school in each state. Training modules were designed to address the needs to children, encouraging interactive learning processes.
The first phase of the project was successfully completed in all seven selected states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi, Odisha, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. Based on this experience, the concerned Programme Units adopted school safety as an integral component of their DRR efforts. The initiative is now being taken forward, liaising with government authorities for training of trainers on school safety to allow replication in other parts of their state. In the second phase, refresher trainings were done with the programme unit in Uttarakhand.
A three-day training workshop on Safe Schools was also organised for Plan’s Asian and African country offices. It was a good example of best practice and experience sharing between countries. It also helped build a perspective of shocks and stresses and their significance for DRR. Plan offices across Asia, South Sudan and Zimbabwe have taken up Comprehensive School Safety Programme, though they are at different stages of implementation.