SCI Laos Successfully Held the Refresher ToT on School Safety Management handbook for district focal points of Safe School Committee.

In partnership with Ministry of Education and Sports, Save the Children held the 4 day-refresher workshop on School Safety Management(SSM) handbook for the district school safety focal points organized in Nan District, Luang Prabang Province. There are 47participants (16 female) from national, provincial, district level representatives from multi-sectoral School Safety-related coordinating government such as Ministry of Education and Sports (MOES), Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE), Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare (MoLSW), Ministry of Health (MOH), Lao Youth Union(LYU) and Lao Women Union (LWU). The content delivery focused on refreshing the key components of the SSM handbook covering 3 CSS pillars and 3 parts namely SSM, the SS and Education continuity toolkits i.e. the Pre-steps and 6 steps of during and after disasters, and the Child participation activities to our district trainers, including new participants this time. 

The workshop conducted in groupwork style where participants were discussing and demonstrating steps how to practice the key activities with school authorities and children. There was also an introduction on new visual materials to support the facilitators when conducting some activities with villagers and children. For example, the stickers of SOP signal for risk mapping, A4-size pictures of disaster types. There had been many fruitful comments from every demonstration within the participants to consider when they rollout in their communities and schools.

Finally, a topic on the potential integration of School Safety Measures (SSM) and how it can be systematically institutionalized in the national curriculum was raised during the workshop. Key government officials from the MoES, including representatives from the Department of General Education and the Research Institute for Educational Science (RIES), shared their perspectives. According to suggestions from MoES during the discussion session, Safe School activities involving children and youth can be organized within schools during extra-curricular hours. Teachers can integrate these activities into the 'Local Context' subject, which accounts for 20% of the national curriculum.

Another highlight of this workshop was a meaningful milestone of CP component through the first Gender/Inclusion power walk per Activity 3 that can help the participants to understand why this activity is necessary when kicking off with children.