explain the messages and discuss them with the
audience.
6. Reaching the young is important to guarantee
that disaster mitigation in communities is long-
term. Several agencies have been successful
in this by using the reconstruction, repairs or
retrofitting of school buildings as an opportunity
to raise awareness of and train both teachers
and pupils; see, e.g. case 1 in the section
Applications. In other cases, children have
actually helped with reconstruction, and thus
learned in practice.
7. Good facilitation of sessions is vital regardless
of the size of the audience. The quality of
facilitation is probably more important than the
quality of the information materials for people
to gain sound knowledge of safer construction.
A good facilitator can work with information
materials that are not of the highest quality,
or even improvise using e.g. a marker pen and
flipchart, role plays and sketches.
8. Information dissemination and communication
needs to be coordinated among the different
agencies assisting people to recover. All
agencies have to be consistent in their messages
and avoid providing conflicting information.
Joint public information campaigns are
encouraged to promote consistency, impact and
share costs.
9. Regular monitoring of how the dissemination
and uptake of better building is progressing can
help improve the efficiency of communication.
It may, for instance, be useful to organise
two-monthly review meetings with community
leaders, local builders and key informants
to assess progress. Are people accepting the
need to incorporate special features in the
housing design for improved safety? Are people
making other suggestions on how safety could
be improved? Are these suggestions valid and
should they be incorporated in future designs?
Are there any aspects of safer building that
people are finding difficult to comprehend?
What can be done to get the messages on
difficult aspects across better?
Applications
See case studies below and over leaf
A number of additional case studies can be
found in the Resources.
Case 1: Making housing in Vietnam resistant to typhoons
The international NGO Development Workshop has been working with families in Thua Tien Hué province
in central Vietnam since 1999 to strengthen their houses against the typhoons that regularly strike the
country. It emerged that families were losing homes and livelihood assets and having to carry out expensive
repairs from typhoons that were classified only as moderate, and would normally be expected to produce
only light damage. People had started to rebuild their houses with concrete, steel, fired clay bricks and
fired clay or concrete roofing, replacing traditional bamboo-based houses. However, they did not know how
to make these new homes safe against typhoons, had only partially completed them, and in some cases
were not able to repair the damage to their houses caused by typhoons. Development Workshop works with
the people of those communities through:
• Awareness raising events, including work with schools, plays and concerts with disaster mitigation
messages, displays, handing out of leaflets and house to house visits, radio and television broadcasts,
sports competitions and a touring exhibition;
• Formation of Commune Damage Prevention Committees that will aim to disseminate safer construction
and undertake pilot projects;
• Preparation of commune damage prevention plans with local communities;
• Encouraging family to family information exchanges so that families who have improved their houses
can inform others;
• Practical training of builders and community representatives;
• Consistently and repeatedly disseminating ten principles of safe construction;
• Demonstration projects of housing strengthening in which families have part of the improvement paid
for but in return are expected to show and inform about their house to other people in the community;
• Strengthening of small public buildings including schools, applying the ten principles of safe
construction; training of teachers and children about disaster prevention;
• Setting up a savings and loans project so that people can save and borrow money to strengthen their
homes.
See: Suresh (undated) and World Habitat Awards (2008)
5