Day 5: Tuesday, May 24

By this final day of the workshop, everyone had come to feel quite at home in the Pithoragarh TRC and with each other. The morning session began with a recap of the previous day's discussions, with the children sharing what they had liked and learned the most. At 11 a.m., the District Magistrate of Pithoragarh, Mr. Amit Negi, dropped in to meet the group. The DM stayed for more than an hour listening to the children talk about their work and accomplishments as well as their concerns and joined the young people in a cup of tea. His visit was important, because it is rare for children (or even adults) from remote villages to have the opportunity to speak with senior government officials. His interest in the children's work was an important endorsement of their efforts.

After everyone had come outside for a group photograph with the DM, he left and the children piled into the bus and cars for a field visit to an abandoned magnesium processing plant a few kilometers up the road. Here Sumit showed us a severely eroded hillside and explained how loose dirt and stone, like that piled up by the plant, exacerbates the erosion process by tearing away at the hillside. Standing above a landslide that looked over the town of Pithoragarh, Sumit urged the children to warn people away from building homes in such areas and described how eroded hillsides could be stabilized by building retaining walls, terracing the slopes, or planting trees.

After the field visit, we returned to the hall where Sumit demonstrated some equipment that could be used to find people buried under rubble. Then MCF facilitator Sudhir talked to the group about the need to make a plan in advance of a disaster and passed out the MCF's disaster preparedness form for them to fill out. This form was intended as a repository of what the children had learned and something tangible they could take back to their villages and use when they spoke to their community about preparing for disasters. They broke into district-level groups to discuss the questions, but each participant filled out a separate form. The children from each district were also given the name and phone number of the officer in charge of the District's Disaster Management Cell (DMMC) and also the statewide disaster hotline phone number. The MCF has retained a photocopy of each form for our records as well. Sumit also handed out village-level disaster-preparedness plan that he had put together for the children to take back to their homes and fill out in conjunction with the village leadership.

The participants then completed a one-page feedback form about the workshop. During the workshop the young people had been strictly forbidden from venturing out of the TRC grounds, for safety reasons, so once all the forms were completed, the young people were finally allowed a much anticipated visit to the Pithoragarh market.

It is worth noting that as the children returned from the market, they saw a fire creeping up the slope below the road to the TRC and took the initiative to try to put it out. Between their efforts and those of some other bystanders, the fire was eventually stopped.

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Publicity and Media Coverage:

The workshop received a gratifying amount of media coverage, with a total of eight articles in the regional dailies, Amar Ujala and Dainik Jagran, and a TV news spot on ETV. In addition to talking about topic of disaster management, the media coverage focused on the children's efforts in their own communities. It was quite thrilling for the children to see their pictures in the paper and most of the people we met in Pithoragarh, including the DM, had read about the workshop in the papers.

We also created a high-quality, glossy, colorful, poster particularly for this workshop. Each participant in the workshop received a poster to take home, as did all of our guest speakers. We have found it an effective calling card when meeting with government officials and the poster has become a brand of sorts for the workshop and children's role in disaster preparedness mitigation.

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