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Canvassing for disaster mitigation brings Children’s creativity to fore

— Photo: T. Singaravelou

Poster Material: Children from tsunami-affected villages painting on the theme disaster risk reduction on Monday.

PUDUCHERRY: It was through paintings and stories that a group of 35 students from tsunami-affected villages in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry learnt to take the lead in disaster mitigation efforts. Now, their creative works will serve as Information Education and Communication (IEC) materials on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), going a long way in creating awareness among people.

Save the Children, a child rights organisation, organised a three-day workshop from September 27 for students, training them in developing IEC materials on DRR.

At the same time, information on DRR, children’s role in disaster prevention and mitigation and ways to help in pre-disaster, disaster and post-disaster period were discussed at the workshop, Malarvizhi Hirudayaraj of Save the Children said.

“On the first day, they were taught basic drawing and colouring. This was followed by drawing with dry crayons, mixing of colours and water colours on the following days. Among the participants, 17 students were involved in drawing, and the others in story writing,” she said.

Coming up with creative pieces of art, the students drew various sketches which included protecting oneself during floods, tsunami waves and fire too.

“We want to use these works for advocacy purposes on DRR. The children are also coming up with short poems, riddles, stories on the theme of disaster risk reduction,” Ms. Hirudayaraj added.

After compiling the works, the best of them would go for printing as advocacy tools including posters.

“The workshop was very beneficial as we obtained information on disasters and protection measures. I have depicted floods and tsunami in my drawings,” said S. Geetha, who came from Nagapattinam.

For K. Kannadhasan from Kalpakam, it came as a new experience. “I came to know disaster preparedness measures including how to save ourselves and help others at times of disasters,” he said.

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