- Learning the Ups and Downs
- April 22, 2008 Filed under: Activities, Events
The Sri Lanka Disaster Management Center has found a new and possibly effective way of educating and training children in disaster mitigation with the help of the popular board game Snakes and Ladders. Snakes symbolize disasters while mitigation methods take the form of ladders.
The UN Development Program and Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights had both joined efforts with the country’s disaster management center to conduct the program at various schools in 16 districts. Zihan Zarouk, the program’s UNDP field coordinator, says that children know what disasters are but “have limited knowledge of how to face them or their aftermath.”
The disaster preparedness training program, which started in November and will end in December of this year, focuses on schools in areas such as Jaffna, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, and Ampara. The program typically commences with a discussion about natural and man-made disasters. Teenage students are then asked to identify and describe disaster areas they have witnessed firsthand. Zarouk says young students most commonly identified lightning, floods, droughts, and landslides as primary types of disasters that pose a serious threat.
The students are also asked to identify possible causes and contributing factors of destructive events and eventually to submit their own proposals for disaster mitigation. One group of students created proposals focused on protection from lightning because of its frequent occurrence. Upon evaluation from the Department of Meteorology, the government provided finances for installing a lightning rod on the school’s roof.
Zarouk says children have the ability to “identify potential mitigating steps that might not otherwise be considered” due to their sensitivity to possible dangers existing within their communities. –Alfa Mercado
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Photo by “andym8y”
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:22 am
I have never run across “Snakes and Ladders” before. In the U.S. we have something called “Chutes and Ladders.” It must be pretty much the same, no?