Lidra Remacka, SF Canada, is currently undertaking an eight-month (July 2018 to March 2019), multi-country field consultancy on behalf of the UNICEF Eastern Caribbean Office. The aim of the consultancy is to concretely build safe school and resilience principles into the education system from national to school level while also supporting the elaboration of disaster risk management at school and community level. The work involves engagement with twelve, English-speaking Caribbean countries: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Carriacou and the Grenadines, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. The island nations were severely affected by hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017. Lidra is based at the UNICEF multi-country office in Barbados.
The consultancy involves:
- Providing technical assistance to Ministries of Education on designing and implementing a Safe School Program, helping mainstream resilience principals in the education system at national level, and supporting the elaboration of the Disaster Risk Management at school level
- Providing direct ‘hands on’ support to the twelve countries in designing and implementing safe school strategies and action plans
- Providing an indicator framework for the Safe School Program covering early childhood education, primary and secondary education as well as developing life skills-based education
- Providing technical support to the Ministries of Education and to local education authorities on inclusive and quality education as well as on education in emergency preparedness, response and recovery standards.
In her work, Lidra is drawing upon the Disaster Risk Reduction Education Toolkit developed by David Selby and Fumiyo Kagawa for the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency and published in 2014. She will use the Toolkit to demonstrate how to infuse disaster risk reduction into the formal school curriculum.
For the Toolkit, click here.