Develop culturally aware disaster preparedness and response training

General association with cultural factors: Norms/values, Customs/traditions/rituals, Worldviews, Open-mindedness, Individual/collective memory, Local knowledge, Languages, Communication, Livelihoods, Rule of law, Power relations, Attitudes toward authorities, Attitudes toward the media, Attitudes toward environmental issues, Gender roles, Age-related roles, Ethnicity, Educational system, Density of active citizenship, Social networks, Social control, Social exclusion, Access and use of infrastructure/services

Recommendations:

Organise large-scale training events, e.g. First Aid and CPR training in sports arenas, to combine skills training with fostering social cohesion amongst citizens from different cultural backgrounds (e.g., but not limited to, different ethnicities, worldviews, or educational backgrounds), and use these events to identify specific cultural needs (e.g., different communication styles).

Related cultural factors: Worldviews, Gender roles, Age-related roles, Ethnicity

Organise community workshops for disaster preparedness where the participants build, or re-build, a collective memory of local disaster risks through the use of historical artefacts and pictures, to encourage citizens via these collective exercises to take up responsibility and action through a shared cultural identity.

Related cultural factors: Individual/collective memory, Local knowledge

To enhance disaster preparedness in specific cultural groups, e.g. people who are engaged frequently in multi-player online games, employ virtual reality as a training method. This could, e.g., be achieved by cooperating with the designers/developers of multi-player games.

To improve acceptance of educators in disaster awareness and preparedness activities, use the potential of peer education, i.e. engage peers as educators for training of citizens within the same cultural group, with the same social status, the same age group, and/or the same religious or ethnic background.

Related cultural factors: Norms/values, Customs/traditions/rituals, Age-related roles, Ethnicity, Socio-economic status

Taking into account that cultural training requires specialist knowledge, which may not always be available in all locations of disaster management institutions, and to ensure that all practitioners “speak the same language” related to cultural issues, develop a (national) culture training resource centre for disasters, where specialised cultural training for practitioners can be conducted centrally, and with specialist trainers who can be deployed for local events across a wider area.

Related cultural factors: Languages

To ensure that disaster practitioners and volunteers integrate cultural factors in their daily practices, develop and integrate a module on cultural competencies for the respective training programs.

Citizens from all cultural (including immigrant) backgrounds should be involved in the planning of emergency and disaster response activities, i.e. before a disaster occurs, to ensure that practitioners learn early about these differences and adapt the guidelines and procedures accordingly.

Encourage citizens to participate in disaster simulation exercises, aiming to strengthen the solidarity and sense of community amongst citizens before a disaster occurs.

Related cultural factors: Social networks

Use disaster simulation exercises, in contrast to emergency drills for practitioners only, as an opportunity to increase mutual understanding between practitioners and citizens, as a learning experience for both, and to improve mutual trust.

Related cultural factors: Attitudes toward authorities, Social networks

Make citizens partners rather than “obstacles”. To help citizens establish self-control and facilitate empowerment in case of a disaster, encourage them in training activities and promotional campaigns to reflect and build upon personal skills they already have that could be useful in a disaster, e.g. technical skills, organising talent or detailed local knowledge.

Further reading:

Bankoff, G. „Cultures of Disaster, Cultures of Coping, Hazard as a frequent life experience in the Philippines”, in C. R. Natural Disasters , Lanham: Lexington Books, 2009.

Bankoff Greg, Georg Frerks, Dorothea Hilhorst, Earthscan, Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development and People, 2012.

Chaudhary, A.G., 2013. Educational Gaming - An effective tool for learning and social change in India. Journal of Creative Communications, 5(3).

Felicio, S.P.A.S. et al., 2014. Stop disasters game experiment with elementary school students in Rio de Janeiro: Building safety culture. In ISCRAM 2014 Conference Proceedings - 11^th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Available at: http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84905841714&partnerID=40&md5=929004775d6b684df4a33f4225123680

Gampell, A.V. et al., 2017. Beyond Stop Disasters 2.0: an agenda for exploring the contribution of video games to learning about disasters. Environmental Hazards, 0(0), pp.1–12. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2016.1275502

International Federation of the Red Cross (2009) Disaster: how the Red Cross Red Crescent reduces risk , 2009, http://www.ifrc.org/Global/Publications/disasters/159600-drr-brochure-en.pdf, Accessed 06.06.2016.

Heeter, C., Hall, E. & Hall, E., 2009. Do Girls Prefer Games Designed by Girls? Media and Information, 4(1).

Ma, M., Oikonomou, A. & Jain, L., 2011. Serious games and edutainment applications Springer, London. Available at: http://www.springerlink.com/index/10.1007/978-1-4471-2161-9.

Macklin, C. & Sharp, J., 2012. Freakinʼ hard: Game Curricula about Game Design, Issues and Technology. In Games, Learning and Society: Learning and Meaning in the Digital Age.

Marsella, J. L. Johnson, & P. Watson, Ethnocultural Perspectives on Disaster and Trauma , Hawaii: Praeger, 2008.

Marsella A.J., Christopher M.A. (2004). Ethnocultural consideration in disasters: An overview of research, issues, and directions. Psychiatr Clin North Am.27: 521-39.

Misomali R., McEntire D. (2008). Rising Disasters and Their Reversal: An Identification of Vulnerability and Ways to Reduce It. In Pinkowski J. Disaster Management Handbook. CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, USA.

Prashantham, B., “Asian Indian. Cultural Considerations for Disaster Workers”, in A. J. Marsella, J. L. Johnson, & W. Patricia, Ethnocultural Perspectives on Disaster and Trauma , Hawaii: Praeger, 2008.

Ryu, D., 2013. Play to Learn, Learn to Play: Language Learning through Gaming Culture. ReCALL, 25(02), pp.286–301. Available at: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=8885230&jid=REC&volumeId=25&issueId=02&aid=8885228&bodyId=&membershipNumber=&societyETOCSession=

Schott, G.R. & Horrell, K.R., 2000. Girl Gamers and their Relationship with the Gaming Culture. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 6(4), Available at: http://con.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/135485650000600404

Shaw, A., 2010. What Is Video Game Culture? Cultural Studies and Game Studies. Games and Culture, 5(4).