adminBy Luthando Mapepa
Over 100 people in Chipinge District recently received psycho-social support training aimed at offering counselling as well as education on future disasters. The training, which was facilitated by Plan International, was focusing on equipping each member of the community at grassroots level with an improved risk perception in terms of disaster management as well as psycho-social support.
The composition of the trainees included Government workers, local leadership, heads of schools and child protection clubs. Plan International education specialist Mr Guy Andang said the main focus of the training was equipping each member of the community with skills to offer psycho-social support, especially in schools.
“Whilst the repair of infrastructure damage has been the focus of much of the schools, the trainees themselves identified psycho-social support as the main priority area.
“In this regard, it is vital that education in emergence responsive initiatives should focus on closing the gap created in ensuring continuity of meeting children’s rights,” he said.
“After Cyclone Idai, we realised that communities and institutions were not prepared. Although awareness campaigns were done, the risk perception of the community was very low.
“They never expected the gravity of the cyclone to be that huge, hence we suffered a lot of fatalities,” he said
Programme facilitator Mr Alington Nhamo from the Ministry of Education said the current ongoing training was critical.
“At the end of the training, we are going to have action plans from both the schools and the community where they will come up with activities in their individuals households so that they can be better prepared for anticipated disasters in their communities.
“We are preparing the participants to be able to identify potential hazards in their localities and then plan for the actions that they can take to mitigate or to act in response to disasters of that nature in the event that they occur in their area,” he added.
Online Reporter