Participatory Rural Apraisal

While researching different methods of Community based Disaster maagment and past education projects I read a very interesting article in the Bulletin of Volcanology (March 2004) on how Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) was used in Ambae Island, Vanuatu in order to allow scientist to understand important local perspectives while avoiding ‘top down’ plans imposed by previously by outside agencies. Past attempts at volcanic hazard awareness involved scientists visiting villages and showing video’s while distributing hazard maps in French and English.

However this did not lead to a better understanding of the hazards faced by the community because the maps contained to much geological information, which only served to confuse the local population. It was previous projects such as this this that caused mistrust among the community and further heightened when in 1995 an evacuation order was given, after increased activity at the crater, but an eruption did not ensue.

Consequently the PRA approach sought to be somewhat less dogmatic aiming to listen rather than lecture, while emphassising visual and diagrammatic techniques over verbal ones. This led to community mapping, followed by hazard mapping and the planning and discussion of evacuation routes. Most importantly, community hazard maps were simplified using three solid colours to indicate the principal hazards and the areas they were most likely to affect. Additionally the text was translated into Bislana (the local langauge).

Although the project was effective in many areas and the local population are no doubt better prepared, there were some interesting outcomes from the project that I would like to highlight and give thoughts on:

1. It was thought that ‘short and effective’ visits were best to undertake when carrying out the hazard mapping tasks so that it fitted in with community life, such as making funeral preparations, festival preparation and other normal events. I can see how this would be beneficial as one of the aims was not to be too intrusive. However, I wondered whether it would have been possible to hold yearly evacuation drills, even making a competition between villages to evacuate quicly and efficiently. Otherwise, there may be a danger that the work carried out would be slowly lost.
2. The society on Ambae is still extremely patriachal with a number of high ranking males (usually the head chief and assistant chiefs) making decisions about disaster management with no discussion or information sharing at all with women and children. Women only workshops highlighted this difference and many women reported that this is what has happened in the past when hazard warnings have been given by the authorities. This clearly places women and children at risk as they are not informed enough to make their own decisions about when to evacuate an area. The researchers working with the communities argued that including women and youths on the disaster committe improves the efficiency of transferring decision making deliberations to their sections of the community. What I found interesting was that although the researchers were trying to move away from ‘top down’ approaches, the community they were working with had there own ‘top down’ approach! For example, the chiefs communicating only with high ranking males who then made decisions about disaster risk, arguably placing the more vulnerable sections of their society - namely women and children most at risk!

Would it be possible to communicate with the chiefs the importance of full community participation in hazard management. How did the chiefs feel when ‘outsiders’ went to the crater without their permission when previously only high ranking males were allowed? It is most likely that they were marginalised in their own backyard and a parallel could be drawn between this and how women and children may feel in the community about disaster management that they are not involved in discussion. It could also be pointed out that when previous ‘experts’ in the form of visiting scientists ordered them to evacuate, some did not trust them and did not leave their homes.

What would have changed their minds?

Part of reducing hazard vulnerability is understanding the dangers, knowing how to evacuate and where to. If all sections of the community are aware of this, they can work together to overcome the difficulties and dangers presented by geohazard events.

What I am curious about now is whether this approach has now been taken in Vanuatu or in other communities that have such patriachal views? If anyone can help me out with this I will be interested and you can post a reply to this here

Aims of PhD

One of the principal aims of a PhD should be originality, either in thought, method of research or results. I have been thinking about this and have tried to pinpoint what my research aims for:

1. Hazard Education will be examined and critiqued alongside different approaches to hazard vulnerability. Although not necessarily ‘original’ this will provide the basis and arguments into why geohazard eductaion has had limited success in the past. For example, taking a ‘dominant’ approach, which is often technocratic, bureacratic and top down in its appraoch, thereby marginalizing the people it is supposed to be helping.
2. Via research, interviews and workshops I hope to pinpoint ways in which future geohazard education projects can be more successful at educationg at risk and vulnerable communities. The overall aim of this is to help vulnerable communities percieve the hazards that they face and take measures to minimise their vulnerablity.
3. Once this information has been collected and carefully analysed, I aim to produce a portable package of materials and guidelines on community based geohazard education that can be used by NGO’s and INGO’s working in high risk areas to effectively involve communities in their own vulnerability reduction projects.
4. The final stage of the research will be to implement the use of the package in two different projects, addressing different hazard needs, possibly in Nepal and Indonesia. Through ongoing monitoring evaluation I should be able to see how affective the guidelines and materials are. It is important that I act as an initial facillitator to education programmes and then step back and let community groups and local educators or community workers evaluate their own risks and vulnerabilities and are then guided on how to be prepared and to reduce the risks to heir community.

Paper for Special Issue on Children and Disasters Children, Youth and Environments

It is 22:52 now and I have just finished my paper which is provisionally entitled: 'How children's vulnerability in disasters can be reduced by their involvement and empowerment through community based education and disaster prevention.' I have outlined briefly what vulnerability is and how it relates to disasters before examining flood hazard mapping in Japan which does not appear to include children and youth in its programme, before looking at two case studies in depth that illustrate how children's vulnerability can be reduced through their involvement and participation. One project was carried out on the island of Luzon in the Philippines and the other was the Plan El Salvador project.

Both seem to be very interesting and more importantly seem to be making an impact on reducing vulnerability across all sectors of the communities in which they have been carried out in. I am a little tired now, so I am going to go to bed with the new(ish) Terry Pratchet book (called 'Thud') and zone out for a bit!

Tsunami Education Comic

While working with form group we looked at different media techniques for educating people about geohazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis. I have put this image of the tsunami risk in comic form, on this blog, but I will also update it on the geo-world site soon as well!
Click here to view it!
While on the subject of education I have also posted my design for a portable shake table here »

On the subject of my paper, I'll get back to it later today, almost completed 3,000 words now so it is getting there!

I haven’t added an entry for a while because I have been busy writing the paper for the children youth and environment journal. I have made quite a bit of headway, I have examined:

• Some hazard and hazard vulnerability theories and practices
• A literature review
• Two projects - one in the Phillipines and the other in El Salvador which used CBDM as a way of engaging people. Project in Phillipines was about increasing populations capacity to cope with geo-hazard events.
• I am now examining the Plan International evaluation with a view to analysing its effectiveness in community hazard mapping and how this has contributed to better awareness and capacity for hazard events.

In terms of planning, etc I have found Sente very useful, have used the British Library a couple of times too examine documents and publications, including Andrew Maskrey etc.

I have downloaded a useful piece of software called ‘Curio’ which is incredibly useful for project management etc. I have used it to help me plan the paper I was talking about earlier as well as drawing up a model for hazards increasing vulnerability beacause the hazard forces or encourages people to engage in practices that worsen the impacts of hazards. I have created a pdf of file here is a link to it first

Following my meeting with Maureen Fordham, I have put a few things into practice. Firstly I evaluated apiece of software that can be used for a bibliography and literature review based on her advice. End Note is supposed to be a cross platform biblography programme, but I have read that it wasn’t that compatible with OS X 10.4 and it was also very expensive. Instead I found a link to Sente on a forum. This is a great piece of software which check online library catalogues and databases for documents and even retrieves it in pdf format if available. The author. a synopsis and key words are then added to your own chosen category or sub-category by dragging the document.

I have managed to track down some of the texts suggested by Maureen on Amazon and these should be coming through any day soon.

Maureen also suggested that we submit a paper to Children, Youth and Environments is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed
journal with a multidisciplinary audience of researchers, policy makers, and professionals in 143 countries around the world (http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye/index.htm). The closing date for abstracts is 15th September. I have viewed the synopsis for abstracts and I think that tackling the subject of children’s vulnerability to hazards and how this can be redressed by empowering children to become involved in risk analysis (hazard mapping in El salvador for instance) It would be useful to find information on the effectiveness of such schemes.
Also might be useful to examine what role groups like COGSS would like to play in future.

16/07/06

Notes on ‘Methods of Delivery’

Again there were several methods of delivery noted in ‘Disaster Risk Reduction: Mitigation and Preparedness’.

•        Posters and leaflets are the most common form of strategy as they are relatively cheap to produce – However, the impact of this method is said to be weakened because of inappropriate images. People are moved by visual images more than verbal ones and tend to remember them better, especially in societies with low literacy levels: THEREFORE: USING TSUNAMI CARTOON DRAWN BY BOY IN MY CLASS AND USING ONLY ONE WORD – ‘TSUNAMI’ is a good way of getting message across. NB – Need to get this scanned and put on web site!
•        Use of Demonstrations – Shake tables are often used in demonstrations. Other demonstrations may also be useful for people to fully comprehend hazards: egg tectonics, clamp and pencil, sound waves (clicking fingers) etc. NOTE: SHAKE TABLES THAT CAN BE CARRIED AROUND ESAILY – VARIABLE SPEED DRILL TABLE DESIGN OR CRANK SHAFT DESIGN, MAY BE MORE USEFUL AS THEY CAN BE MADE AND DISTRIBUTESD TO EDUCATORS AND PEOPLE WILLING TO DEMONSTRATE.
•        Hazard Risk Maps: Important that they are presented in an easily understood format - Is it possible to use 3D mapping and photographic montages so that maps are less abstract – especially to people with lower literacy levels. When hazard maps are being drawn up sites could also be photographed? (i.e. Parts of volcano slope where pyroclastic surges may occur, or safer areas that population should evacuate to!)
Entertainment Media: In past radio soap operas have been used to get across the dangers of hurricanes – Teimpos de Huracanes (Hurricane Season) in Central America. I thought that working with school and producing a DVD in a ‘Bollywood’ style to show people the dangers of earthquakes and of the importance of building design and of duck and cover exercises. In particular a good and easily remembered song needs to be written and a good dance routine!! I have approached the director media at school and we have started to talk about possible locations for filming etc. gain the idea is to get students to be involved writing and producing the film. If this was successful it could either be exported and used in education projects or used as a model for villages/ schools to make their own versions, using a pre written format – Much like a village play - Very useful in places like Indonesia where this is a useful way of learning about past or myths and legends – can be used in an educational way – Shadow Puppets?

14/07/06

Having read chapter sent to me by John Twigg on Education, Information and Communications on geohazards, I have had some thoughts and have made some annotations to the text.

•        It is important to understand the community one is seeking to help. This is more than just knowing a little about the culture, any project needs to communicate with local population what their needs, priorities and indigenous knowledge and capacity.
•        Although risk management and education about risks posed is important, but must be informed by communities experience and perception of the risk. There is probably an argument therefore of setting up education projects while having a close dialogue with local population.
•        Visualisation, talk and modelling etc are the best ways to analyse and transmit knowledge. Is it also possible to get local people involved in the measurement, monitoring of hazards – i.e. appointing someone to be responsible for looking for warning signs and communicating dangers at the local level. (same principal as putting seismographs in UK and US schools – i.e. it generates interest and provokes people into wanting to find out more…However it is important that this information is available and accessible when the time comes.
•        There is an argument that vulnerable people can explain their perspectives clearly to outsiders if given the opportunity to do so…How did Kubilay find this in Pakistan? What was the most effective method? Workshops? Talking/Meetings? Teaching? Informal chats?
•        Many disaster programmes should include communications and awareness raising: Public Education is often undertaken by people without special training or skills which results in ‘fragmented, one-off, short-term interventions’. Education therefore needs to be an ongoing basis, developing over time as local knowledge becomes moiré sophisticated’.