Looking Beyond Disaster toolkit

New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO

In March 2015 we launched an instructional how-to toolkit for bringing young people together around the theme of natural disasters and the impacts they have on communities.  The Looking Beyond Disaster toolkit was launched at the United Nations' 3rd World Conference On Disaster Risk Reduction, which set the new inter-governmental plan for reducing the negative impacts of disasters around the world. This plan included that:

      “Children and youth are agents of change and can contribute their experience and should be given the space and modalities to do this”
                 -  Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 

The purpose of the toolkit, led by UNESCO, was to provide a user-friendly resource that can help people create this "space and modality". I was asked to lead the creation of the toolkit because of my work with disaster response and recovery in Christchurch and abroad with the Student Volunteer Army (see My Work for more details), and involvement with the Looking Beyond Disaster International Youth Forum series that had occurred over the preceding three years.

See www.LookingBeyondDisaster.com for more details about the forum series or to view or download the toolkit.