Asia is impacted by several disasters e.g. floods, landslides, earthquakes, which threaten life, property and severely impact livelihoods. Exposure to any kind of disaster can be a traumatic experience for children, affecting their future developmental potential. They are often not involved in the disaster response and rehabilitation. Mostly their physical needs are addressed at priority level rather than their cognitive and emotional needs. The disaster may cause life long impact on to the minds of children that may effect their functioning and can shatter their sense of security. The impact of disasters varies according to the nature of the disaster and according to the age at which the child is exposed to it. The distress also become worse if the child was alone at the time of disaster and witnessed terrible deaths.

Effects on Children

The disaster causes a number of emotional problems on survivors especially on children. For them, after the impact of a major disaster, it is extremely difficult to understand what has happened to their home and family. Most children get confused by the sudden interruption in the normality of their lives. While in some children intense feelings and emotional trauma may result directly and immediately after the disaster, while for others it may occur at a later time.

Some typical reactions among young children may be of:

• Physical reactions include helplessness and passivity that may manifest through a fear of being separated from the parents, immobility or aimless motion, excessive clinging and total withdrawal from any current situation.
• Emotional reactions may include regressive behavior (children’s behaviors seen at earlier age), such as bedwetting, thumb sucking and fear of darkness. They   may also complain of stomach aches or other somatic complaints that appear to have no medical basis. Other emotional reactions are expressed through disobedience, depression, headaches and visual or hearing problems.

Emotional reactions among adolescents may be similar to those of adults, including depression, increased substance use and abuse, nightmares, emotional numbing and avoidance of any reminders of the hazardous event. It also includes problems with peers, suicidal thoughts, school avoidance, and academic performance decline. Most of these behaviors are temporary and usually subside over time.

Safety at Schools for Disaster

There are two broad areas of school safety: structural safety and capacity building of the staff and children at schools. Buildings should be seismically safe and there should be a system in place to handle primary rush in case of an emergency. Secondly, there is need for building capacity and skills of the children, teachers, and school management staff to protect their lives and handle emergency situations effectively.

Comprehensive School Safety Approach

The comprehensive school safety approach is essential for future school safety programme. There are three major purposes of school safety programmes which include reducing injuries, capacity building of students and other staff, recommencement and or continuation of education during and after the disaster. It also consists of information dissemination and raising awareness about potential affects and reduction of hazards or a disaster on population, children and schools. Capacity building consists of training in critical areas like medical first aid, leadership, swimming lessons etc.

Responsibility of Teachers towards Students’ Preparedness

Children are natural learners and educating them about hazards/disasters from an early age seems promising. Various methods and activities have been designed and used in different parts of the world for educating preschool and school age children for disasters preparedness. Teachers and educators can play a very instrumental role in disaster planning and preparedness because of their position in the community and interaction with children and parents. They can be very effective in educating students about the risk of natural disasters and preparing them on the course of action to take when a particular disaster strikes. At schools level mock drills can help develop an emergency plan of the school including evacuation exercies. Child-to-child approach can be another method that can help children to act out scenarios to their peers who can decide if the scenario they are acting is correct or incorrect in terms of what they should do in the event of any hazard/disaster. Lastly, role playing is also an effective and popular technique for disaster preparedness among school children. In this method, children think of tangible situations and feel them naturally. This method stimulates their interest and makes them feel involved in the assigned roles and helps to bring out correct reactions. This method also makes them able to reach a certain level of self-confidence in confronting natural hazards/disasters.

Rehabilitation and Recovery

Teachers also have a responsibility to address social, emotional and psychological problems that can occur as an aftermath of a disaster. Teachers can assist children in coping with a disaster through the following strategies:

• Setting of gentle but firm limits for acting-out behavior (aggression, temper tantrum, breaking rules etc).
• Give additional attention and consideration, listen to their concerns carefully, correct their misconception about the event and try to assure them that they have done everything to the extent that they could have done during and after the disaster
• Relax expectation at school and in school performance.
• Involve and prepare the child for the next emergency.
• Encourage participation in community rehabilitation work.
• Avoid all kinds of punishments as this might prolong the emotional reactions of children.
• Use the child-to-child approach and design activities which aim at rehabilitation of the affected children;
• Support and encourage students to help their friends and help their school staff too;
• Develop school emergency preparedness and management plan with the help of students.
• Develop peer support groups, for the rehabilitation of the children , plan expressive activities (including drawing competition, role playing, story telling and sports), as they understand the reactions, feelings, behavioral and psychological changes better in their peer groups than teachers and parents;
• Help children in the identification of at risk children as they have more interaction with their peers as compared to any other person. In this way they are able to tell or to identify the group of other children who need more attention (psychological, counseling or require medical  support)

It is important for education to facilitate and contribute to preparing children to face and cope with disasters adequately. It then becomes imperative that existing curricula include environmental issues and disaster prevention topics in their materials and the relevant content is part of both students’ textbooks as well as teachers training programs since teachers play a pivotal role in the educating and preparing students for natural disaster events that may occur in their environment.

About the Writer:
Ms. Hafiza Arisha Qayyum is a psychologist and currently working with AKU-HDP as Research Officer.