Armenia

Armenian Red Cross Society within the framework of "Building Safe and Resilient Communities" project financed by Austrian Development Cooperation (ADA), reached tengible awareness raising among population in Yerevan and Lori region, through training teachers of target schools. 

Starting from first year of Project implementation ARCS initiated organization of trainings for 160 teachers from 28 target schools. The trainings were included school based DRR topics such as “Basics of Civil Protection in Educational institutions“, „School capacity assessment“, „Risks and Hazards“, „Methodology for teaching pupils“, First Aid, Family Emergency Planning, etc... The trainings gave school teachers more enhanced understanding about disasters, different hazards and code of behaviour to be protected from them. In that regard the director of  1^st school of Yerevan, expressed her gratitude to Project organizators and implementors, saying that „sometimes we are forgetting that we are living in very disaster prone area, and should consider also the fact that such hazards as earthquakes and fires are always behind us...  participation on training refreshed our knowledge which gave us a new field to think differently about Disaster Risk Reduction in schools and how much we can contribute for it“.

At the end of each training, as a result of advocacy efforts, teachers were highly motivated and expressing their willness and the importance to pass the gained knowledge to school pupils. It is worth to mention that in most schools, trained teachers initiated to organize trainings for senior teachers in their schools, to include DRR topics in their weekly based open classes, which is additional to main DRR lessons and seminars.

The results achiecved through trainings are following:

1)     160 trained teachers in 28 schools of Yerevan, and Lori region

2)     Around 16500 passed trainings on DRR through trained teachers and participated at competitions and quizzes.

3)     About 49500 family members of school pupils raised their awareness through developing Family emergency plans and  conducted non-structural  mitigation measures at their homes.