Visiting Safe School Networks in Indonesia and Thailand to develop an ASEAN Regional Monitoring Mechanism on Safe Schools

RDI, is commissioned by Plan International as lead representative of AADMER Partnership Group, is conducting country consultations with Indonesia and Thailand to develop the regional reporting mechanisms on Safe School program in ASEAN. This project is part of the ASEAN Safe Schools Initiative that was launched in 2013 and currently is being funded by the European Union government through DIPECHO. The regional reporting mechanism is being developed to assess the progress of safe schools progamming in each ASEAN Member States and to enable ASEAN Member States to learn from one another regarding challenges, achievements, and innovations in relation to safe schools in ASEAN.

Picture 1. Mr. Avianto Amri (RDI Fellows) Durring Presentation

In both countries, Avianto Amri and Yusra Tebe  RDI Fellows, met with key stakeholders on safe schools, consists of the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the National Disaster Management Offices (NDMOs) in each country as well as leading NGOs such as Plan International, World Vision, Save the Children, and Care International. The consultations covers key issues that requires inputs from Member States such as the main principles of reporting, how the reporting will be done, and what types of indicators that is best to be applied. In addition to this, the RDI team, lead by Dr. Saut Sagala, also designed an online survey to gather inputs from government and non-government stakeholders from the ten ASEAN Member States. To date, inputs and feedbacks have been received from six ASEAN Member States, including also from UN ISDR.

This week, on 25^th May 2018, Dr. Saut Sagala will presents the results to date in a closed session with the members of the Prevention and Mitigation Working Group of the ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management in Bangkok, Thailand. In this session, Dr. Sagala will captures more detail inputs and it will contribute for the final draft of the Safe School reporting mechanism. The regional reporting mechanism aims: a) To assess progress of each AMS and regional initiatives; b) To capture good practices and lessons learned; c) To encourage collaboration and cooperation among different stakeholders; and d) To develop evidence-based recommendations for improvement and scaling up.