Angtigua, October 18th, 2013 -- Teachers, who participated in a three-day School Safety Course held at the National Office of Disaster Services (NODS), are being encouraged to ensure the development of disaster plans in their respective schools.
The course, facilitated by a three-member team from US AID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), touched on such topics as knowing existing risks and risk management education in order to save lives in school and community emergencies.
Director of the National Office of Disaster Services (NODS) Philmore Mullin says the expected outcome from the workshop is that each school will have a disaster plan in place. Similar workshops were held in the past and only a few schools have moved the process along.
Several teachers, who took part in the October 14 – 16 session, held at NODS, say they are quite eager to begin work on their plans. Arlene Peters, a Senior Teacher at the Greenbay Primary School, says she has seen a lot of things that needs to be done at her institution and she is willing to start working.
According to Shameka Hodge-Joyce from the Parham Primary School, the course has been valuable to her. “It has changed my perception of what school safety is and what I should do in terms of adverse events, disasters, emergencies. I think that the knowledge gleaned would assist me in forming a school disaster committee where we can make our school more able to deal with disasters and I think even in my personal life at home I now have a better understanding of risks that may be in my home or around my community”, said Hodge-Joyce.
Another participant Khori Edwards represented the Freemansville Primary. He said the session was very informative and most of the materials are practical, they can be applied immediately. “The next step is to take what I’ve learnt and have a workshop with my teachers as well and then we’ll go from there in setting up our disaster plan.
We have a lot of hazards that we didn’t realise were hazards so we have to look into them and change a few things”. At the end of the course, the teachers had the opportunity to observe an evacuation drill at the TN Kirnon School, which already has its plan in place.
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Antigua News