Day 6

Today I went to another site to teacher about disaster preparedness. The site today was a big tent that had been made into a makeshift church. Next door was a camp, which is a bunch of tents or makeshift houses for the people who’s houses have been destroyed from the earthquake. When we arrived the children of the camp all camp over to greet us. It was so much fun to play with them before we had to teach.

In between sessions we got to play with the children more. We decided to give them the children’s earthquake booklets since we knew we would have extra. We thought this would be a good way to get word out to the people of that camp. To our surprise we had much more in store though.

When our afternoon session was supposed to begin, there were no teachers! So we looked around, saw about 30 children sitting in the church pews and said, “Here’s our opportunity”. We spent about an hour teaching the children what to do if an earthquake or a fire occurs. We did drills with them to make sure they understood not only what to do but how to do it. During this time parents came over and watched as well. So not only did we reach teachers and students but we spread the word to the parents as well.

For the last hour we did have a few teachers show up so we held our last preparedness session and included the children of the camp in the lesson. We had the teachers act out scenarios with them and perform drills so they could really see what to do.

Overall this was an amazing experience. I feel that our group touched the lives of many people and hopefully many more as these teachers and children spread the word around their communities. As I said in a previous post, I may not be cut out to shovel rubble all day but I know I can spread the word about how to be prepared for another disaster.

-Kat