We started focussing on Disaster Preparedness after Konaseema cyclone that hit near Kakinada in East Godavari District.A.P on 6/11/1996 in which 1077 lost their lives.  Lakhs of animals like cattle and chicks were dead and 6 lakhs of houses were fully or partially damaged and about 10 lakh coconut trees were fallen. This cyclone has opened our eyes. We strongly felt that lack of preparedness on the part of a community which is directly facing a hazard like a cyclone is resulting in the huge number of deaths.

Then we started capacitating the local youth of coastal villages in A.P on Disaster preparedness by forming the village level task force committees with 30 able-bodied youth. Each task force committee is further divided into five teams such as  1. Warning team  2. Shelter Management team 3. First aid team 4. Search & Rescue team 5.water & sanitation team.

In order to further strengthen ourselves in the area of Disaster Preparedness, Creators became a founder member in the network “ CADME “ [ Coastal Area Disaster Mitigation Efforts ]  and it’s great services were well recognised by UN with an award called  “ SASAKAWA “ received by our secretary Mr.M.Gurudatt Prasad at Bonn, Germany in 2004.

Creator’s chief functionary Mr Chandra Sekhar underwent even International training on Disaster Preparedness in “ ADPC “  [Asian Disaster Preparedness centre ], Bangkok and in Centre for Excellence. The University of Hawai in the U.S.A.

Creators now can proudly say that in 24 years of its an extensive journey in the area of Disaster preparedness it became a part of developing 500 strong village level task force committees in Coastal A.P which can combat with any type of disasters such as cyclones, floods etc. At present,t Creators is a  partner in the CADME’S world bank & APSDMA’s [ A.P.State Disaster Management Authority ] CBDRM [ Community Based Disaster Risk Management ] supported programme in the Coastal Andhra Pradesh.

School Safety

We have conducted several trainings on School safety in East Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh for the focal teachers identified by the government schools. We have designed a special training programme for school safety. The training curriculum includes both basic and advance course content. The teachers were given inputs on the history of various school disasters, different terms of disasters and school safety, identification of students and other key players to form SDMC [School Disaster Management Committee], school vulnerability analysis, Preparation of comprehensive  School safety plans, Government policies on school safety,  inventory of local resources, Risk reduction & resilience education,  organising mock drills etc.

After the focal teachers are trained then, they along with the presence of staff conducted trainings on school safety to the 25 identified students in each school. After the training in each school is conducted, the participants prepared a map on School vulnerability analysis and School safety plan.  Then these students conducted trainings in each class separately on school safety.  After the trainings are over in each school our co-ordinator and the focal teacher along with the trained students formed 10 members SDMC in each school taking students, focal teacher, sarpanch, parents, SHG, youth leader of the village etc in the SDMC. These SDMCs in each school based on the identified risks such as speeding vehicles, bushy areas inside the school campus, schools without school compounds, stray dogs movement near the schools,  open electrical boxes inside the classrooms, unfenced water tanks near the schools, dilapidated school buildings, stagnated water pools in & outside the schools, etc in school vulnerability analysis, started solving them by approaching the concerned Government departments.

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