Photo Caption: DDM Training and Research Officer, Ms. Carishma Hicks presents a
School Safety Kit to Principal of the Ebenezer Thomas Primary School, Ms. Sybil
Hodge. Similar presentations were made to the Seventh-day Adventist School and
the Little Litehous Child Development Centre.
Pre-packaged School Safety
Kits have been provided for the schools in Sea Cow’s Bay as part of the SMART
School Pilot Project.
The presentations were made Thursday
by Ms. Carishma Hicks, Training and Research Officer at the Department of
Disaster Management (DDM).
Each School Safety Kits consist of
durable rolling backpack containing a number of essential items for responding
to emergency or crisis situations on campus. The wheeled bags can be easily
taken by teachers during school evacuations or field trips and are specifically
designed to support school emergency response programmes.
Thursday’s presentations come on the
heels of emergency response training that was provided by the DDM for teachers
and parents from all three schools in Sea Cow’s Bay, in collaboration with the
BVI Red Cross and the Virgin Islands Fire and Rescue Service.
In September 2014, 30 teachers and
parents came together to form Campus Emergency Response Teams which entailed
training similar to what is provided for Community Emergency Response Teams
(CERT) in the areas of First Aid, light search and rescue and fire suppression.
“The CERT training included several
practical sessions which offered an opportunity for teachers to be prepared to
handle emergencies that may occur in school,” Ms. Hicks said, adding, “some
have since been able to apply what they learned to address minor incidents that
have occurred on the play grounds.”
The DDM Training and Research Officer
further stated, “It is important that we not only train the teachers but
provide them with the supplies and equipment that they will need to adequately
and efficiently respond to emergencies. The School Safety Kits contain
sufficient supplies to be used by a fully established team of six in each
school.”
The provision of School Safety Kits is
one of the components of the SMART School Pilot Project being implemented at
the Seventh-day Adventist School, Little Litehous Child Development Center and
the Ebenezer Thomas Primary School.
The project seeks to illustrate how
sustainable, mitigation, adaptation and resilient techniques can be used to
make schools safer, healthier and more environmentally conscious. It has
received full endorsement from the Ministry and Department of Education and
involves school administrators, teachers, parents, children and community
members.
The SMART School Pilot Project is
funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) through the Caribbean Disaster
Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), as part of the Mainstreaming Climate
Change in Disaster Management in the Caribbean Phase II (CCDM-II) Project.
