Disaster Awareness Education for Children in Schools Around Geological Hazard Prone Areas in Indonesia

Geological disaster awareness has been increasing recently in Indonesia, especially since the great Aceh’s Tsunami & Earthquake. It is important that all stakeholders have reasonable understanding on disaster response. School communities generally have limited disaster education opportunities and knowledge. This could imply a low level of disaster awareness. This paper aimed to examine the knowledge on disaster response and to highlight the needs to introduce earth science for school communities by exploring three areas: (i) disaster education, (ii) respond to disaster event, (iii) knowledge of earth science. The study had been started since 2006, targeted on schools located on the areas that experienced and/or potential to earthquake and tsunami in the future. Several schools around the coastline of Indian Ocean of Sumatera, Java, Bali & Lombok islands had been visited. In each school, we examined the curriculum, preparedness to face disaster, and activity of mitigation. Our posters and pamphlets were also distributed. Presentation and short drama were performed in the classroom to measure understanding of the contents. Result showed that disaster awareness were generally out of curriculum, due to limited knowledge of the curriculum development. For the respond to disaster event, most of participants are unaware what to do when disaster happens. Our visit had increased the curiosity of school communities to learn more about these disasters. These results suggest that dissemination of entry level of earth science is deeply needed, since there is no such subject (especially geology) in primary to secondary level schools in Indonesia.