Disaster resilience starts with the young: mainstreaming disaster risk reduction in the school curriculum

This report is the culmination of an intensive Knowledge Sharing Workshop conducted among ASEAN Member States on Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction in Education held in Malacca, Malaysia on 18-19 February 2011. The first part of the workshop report discusses the importance of developing a culture of resilience at an early age, and underlines the importance that schools and educators play to achieve a disaster resilient society. It also tackles the key concepts of disaster risk reduction (DRR), disaster and resilience. This section sets the foundation for a clearer understanding of why benchmarking good practices on mainstreaming DRR in education, particularly in primary and secondary education, is a significant endeavour.

The second part of the document highlights selected good practices as reported by education ministries of the ASEAN Member States. These are then grouped into four performance areas, namely, Enabling Environment, Curriculum Review and Development, Teacher Training and Professional Development, and Assessment of Learning Outcomes in DRR. Drawing from good practices and lessons learned from various experiences in the region, this section describes levels of progress based on the four abovementioned areas and guide the target users of this report in planning and implementing their initiatives in mainstreaming DRR in education.