DIAMOND ― 4th Intervention

DIAMOND (Disaster Management for Special Needs Children) is a community development by CIMSA UGM that has been going since 2018. In this year, DIAMOND did the final intervention and closed the community development project. DIAMOND targeted community was a school for special needs children in yogyakarta, SLB B Karnnamanohara. Based on the questionnaire we gave to the community, the majority of the teacher and the student didn’t fully understand about disaster management. They also think that the school has a high risk of being affected by a disaster. Based on Dinsos DIY, in 2020 there are 7 million special needs children who got impacted by a natural disaster. These kids suffer a greater challenge than other people (e.g. shelter doesn’t provide easy access for people in wheelchairs, a sign that the shelter is not suitable for people with disability).

This activity aimed to increase their knowledge about disaster mitigation and evacuation. We also hope that DIAMOND can raise their awareness and improve the evacuation system in SLB Karnnamanohara. In the past intervention, DIAMOND already gave a handbook that contained a lot of information about disaster mitigation and evacuation, such as earthquakes and eruptions. We also made an evacuation plan and made a video with a subtitle so the students can understand the evacuation plan. In this last intervention, we did an interactive education session with seven sixth grade students of SLB B Karnnamanohara about disaster management and also about health protocols in COVID-19 pandemics. We also made posters that contained information about disaster management, evacuation, and health protocols. With our last intervention, we hope that the previous information we gave in the past interventions can be recalled and will increase their knowledge about disaster management. 

We also did mini games to raise the participant’s excitement and gave them some gifts if they could answer the question correctly. At the end of the intervention, we give the posters and certificate as a symbol that DIAMOND has already finished all of the intervention. We hope all of our interventions can create a sustained understanding about disaster management. We also hope SLB B Karnnamanohara can be an example for other schools of special needs children to improve their knowledge about disaster management.