Resources for Educators
There are a number of comprehensive packages on disaster preparedness and recovery available on the Web designed for use by Extension Educators, teachers, and other professionals.
Children, Stress, and Natural Disasters from the University of Illinois Extension is a set of resources for teachers and other child-care or youth workers that helps prepare them for working with children who have been through a disaster. It includes A Resource Guide for Teachers that describes what teachers can do to help during the recovery period, a set of Classroom Activities for Teachers that can be used following a disaster, and a Disaster Bibliography of children's books on floods and natural disasters compiled by Lynn Blinn Pike at the University of Missouri.
The Natural Disaster Program for Families is a program from the North Carolina Extension Service that provides information on (1) things to do before a disaster, and (2) response or clean-up information following a disaster. Designed for use by Extension Educators working with families, it includes ready-to-use 30-second radio spots, factsheets, leader guides with handouts, and additional resource information.
Additional Disaster Information includes a listing of information that can be obtained at little or no cost from the American Red Cross, the Center for Mental Health Services, and FEMA.
The Natural Hazards Center is a national and international clearinghouse for information on natural hazards and human adjustments to hazards and disasters. The Natural Hazards Center carries out its mission in four principal areas: information dissemination, an annual workshop, research, and library services. The center's prime goal is to increase communication among hazard/disaster researchers and those individuals, agencies, and organizations that are actively working to reduce disaster damage and suffering. The Natural Hazards Center has a variety of resources available from the Internet, including periodicals, publications, and an online library database.
The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder maintains the PILOTS database, an electronic index to the worldwide literature on PTSD and other mental-health sequelae of exposure to traumatic events.
The American Red Cross has a newly developed program that will soon become a national standard for training staff and volunteers of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). With a grant from the Department of Homeland Security, the Red Cross is providing this program in Chicago and 29 other U.S. communities. The project emerged out of the realization that there is no consistent and universally available training program to prepare NGOs to respond to and provide emergency human services in a post-WMD/T environment. This FREE program strives to increase awareness of the threats and characteristics of a WMD/T incident, and improve the planning for and management of a response. The curriculum includes six online courses (two introductory courses plus tracks in mass care and mental health) and a tabletop exercise that will assess and develop an organization's response capabilities. To self-register for the web-based training, please visit www.dhs-ngo-pilot.org .
