DOHA: Qatar Red Crescent (QRC) is planning to expand its ‘Safe School’ programme launched last year targeting all schools in the country.
“It is part of our plans to expand our programme to make all schools in Qatar safe,” said Reema Al Muraikhi, Head of QRC’s Risk Reduction Team, yesterday. She was delivering a presentation on the programme to share Qatar’s experience on disaster risk reduction on the sidelines of the global launch of World Disasters Report 2014 in Katara.
“Since its launch, the programme has already benefited 7,072 students, 600 teachers and 21 schools,” said Al Muraikhi.
She said the programme is aligned with the WDR 2014’s theme “Culture and risk” and Hyogo framework for Disaster risk reduction.
The programme has involved community volunteers “in designing and implementing a program for reducing disaster risks and vulnerability and hence building the capacity of the community that will contribute to the promotion of a culture of safety and self-reliance.”
One of the challenges that the programme has encountered was encouraging the community’s behaviour toward risk reduction and preparedness as the country has not experienced natural disasters like earthquakes.
“The absence of previous exposure to earthquakes enforced the beliefs that we live in protected region that will never experience natural disasters. This resulted in neglecting the need of raising the awareness and implementing of precautions to be taken before, during and after an earthquake,” she said.
However, they successfully shattered this false belief by building on the two tremors that Qatar experienced on April 9 and 16 last year as concrete examples. The tremors resulted from earthquakes that struck Iran in which injuries, unsafe behaviors and chaos were reported during evacuations.
“As a result of that, QRCS “disaster risk reduction volunteer team” took the initiative in preparing a situation report, which highlighted the need for designing a Community based program to train the community on how to deal with earthquake before, during and after the incident.”
The Peninsula
