Living With Disaster

This is an Emergency Management for Schools learning resource, developed and produced by The Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

About the project.

The Emergency Management in Schools education program (www.ema.gov.au/schools) is aimed at supporting the teaching of disaster risk and disaster management awareness.

The program promotes this process by providing nationally consistent educational resources to schools and teachers, ready to use in the classroom.

"Living with Disaster" was developed as part of the National Action Plan to build on Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security, and aims to provide young people from a variety of communities the chance to tell their own stories of how disasters have affected them, their families and communities.

Facilitated by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), the project began in December 2008, eight of the stories are from young people involved and affected by the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria 2009 and two from young people affected by flooding near Newcastle NSW 2007.

They tell of their personal experiences using images, video and music. The resulting short videos are supported by teaching materials and activities to create a comprehensive learning resource, enabling teachers and students to have structured discussion about the issues and realities of such events and the activities have been designed to look at what preparation and awareness of disaster risk means for a variety of community groups.

The messages in these stories are the ones developed by the person themselves as part of ACMI's workshop process and the learning activities complement and expand on these reflections.

These stories from other young people, often ignored in media coverage, will allow students to connect to their own understandings of these events and relate to the experiences of other young people, their families and communities.

The Attorney-General's Department would like to acknowledge the following people for their contributions to this project

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image : Workshop facilitation and production team : Helen Simondsen, Eugenia Lim, Anna Svedburg, Peter Lambropoulos.

Teaching guide and activities - Fiona Jewel

Youth foundations Victoria : Zephlyn Nielsen, Helen Sartinas, Philip Mitchell, Bonnie Lumsden-Keys, Carla Zekas, Lydia Romari, Eliza Kimlin, Sarah Davy, y

Country Fire Authority Victoria : Sherri Mc Kerley,

CFA Region 14 Wallan Brigade : Captain Peter Roylance, Jenny Roylance, Simon Roylance, Alex Batty, Tim Benneti, Dean Anderson, Michael Hoyne, Tom Upton, Jo Metz, Hayden Mc Memnnemin.

Warburton Community Bank Branch of the Bendigo bank : Geoff Vickers

The Octopod Association Newcastle : Christina Robberds, Ella McDonald, Djibril Ly, Kat Hay

© 2009 Australian Government & The Australian Centre for the Moving Image.