DRR initiatives are blooming! [Philippines]
On 7th June, SEEDS Asia paid a visit at Bankal National High School in Lapu-lapu City and had an opportunity to hear about Department of Education (DepEd) Lapu-lapu City Division’s DRR activities. The DepEd Division’s DRRM Coordinator Ms. Ma. Elena Berame has been an active partner of SEEDS Asia’s JICA-funded projects so far. The School DRRM Coordinator of Bankal National High School underwent DRR education and management training organized by Ms. Ma. Elena, and now is leading the entire city’s school-based DRR activities.
Ms. Ma. Elena and the School DRRM Team of Bankal National High School are currently preparing for the ‘DRR Olympics’ that will be held in July to celebrate the Philippines’ Disaster Resilience Month. The event is where children (elementary to senior high graders) will engage in DRR learning while having fun, through activities such as bucket relays, DRR quizzes and board games, etc. These activities incorporate Hyogo Prefectural Board of Education’s and SEEDS Asia’s accumulated experience of developing DRR learning methods.
This shows how our previous project partners have been nurturing the seeds of grassroots DRR initiatives that are growing within and out of schools, on to town and city levels.
Bankal National High School in fact holds the biggest office for school DRR in Lapu-lapu City. Therefore, the school stores and maintains the generator sets donated by Japan Platform and SEEDS Asia to the DepEd office through the emergency support project after Typhoon Odette. In case there will be any school that may require generators in the future, the school will initiate and manage renting them to the most in need. SEEDS Asia is extremely humbled to witness such disaster preparedness utilising what we have provided previously.
