Asian Disaster Preparedness Center’s (ADPC) national iPrepare essay competition to raise university students’ awareness on preparedness to natural disasters has been concluded in Bangladesh.

Through the competition, ADPC aimed to increase the students’ knowledge regarding natural hazards such as earthquakes, storms, and floods, and the measures that can be taken to mitigate the impact of disasters.

Supported by the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and conducted in cooperation with Asian University for Women, Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology, Daffodil International University, Khulna University, and University of Dhaka, the campaign trained university students on basic disaster preparedness measures and encouraged the students to share the knowledge with their communities.

During the launch ceremony at each university, ADPC gave a presentation introducing basic preparedness strategies to the students, who were then responsible for exploring preparedness strategies within their own communities. Their findings were presented in research papers and videos, and nearly 100 submissions were received during the competition.

Exploring coastal communities preparedness to storms

The winning video was created by Ms. Rezoana Hossain Khan and Mr. Sajjadul Alam from Daffodil International University, who travelled 600 kilometers from Dhaka to create the winning video by highlighting the disaster preparedness methods practiced by locals at Kuakata beach in Southern Bangladesh.

From left Tasnim Shams, regional winner from the University of Dhaka, and National Prize winners Ms. Rezoana Hossain Khan and Mr. Sajjadul Alam from Daffodil International University.

A storm was approaching the area and they decided to make the journey to capture how local people dealt with the storm’s affects. The pair only had a short amount of time to shoot the video and they described filming in harsh weather conditions.

“We live in Dhaka, so we never experience this type of weather. But the locals weren’t scared. They were used to these types of storms,” said Ms. Khan.

The two understood they could have researched preparedness to hazards that regularly affect Dhaka, such as floods, but they wanted to travel outside their comfort zone to explore a disaster that they were unfamiliar with.

Learning how to prepare for annual flooding

The iPrepare campaign is designed to give students the opportunity to educate themselves on preparedness strategies in their community and country alike.

Asian University for Women has a high amount of international students that participated in the iPrepare competition in Bangladesh, and some student’s submissions focused on disasters in their home country to guide their research.

The students awarded for the best submission at Asian University for Women, Y Soun Phann and Thany Thao are from Cambodia and even though they have dealt with floods all their life, they never thought about flood preparedness. The iPrepare campaign gave them the opportunity to explore preparedness methods that can mitigate flood risk in their own community.

From left Ms. Thany Thao and Ms. Y Soun Phann, Regional winners from Asian University for Women in Chittagong, hold up their awards.

“When we are in our own country, even though we know that we need to raise awareness we don’t have a chance to speak out. The iPrepare project helps us speak out to the world and share what we think about flooding,” said Ms. Thao.

Increasing knowledge on disaster preparedness

Asian University for Women made iPrepare a required project supporting ADPC in its effort to spread awareness. Because it was graded, students were motivated to seek help from their professors.

The iPrepare campaigns gave students inside and outside the disaster risk management discipline the opportunity to increase their knowledge on disaster preparedness and through their efforts build community awareness when exploring community preparedness strategies already in place.

“[Disaster preparedness] is not a specialized area, but disasters affect all segments of the population, and all students should have knowledge on this area. Many students are coming together to join hands and their motivation was not for winning, but being committed to contribute to society,” said Dr. Mahbuba Nasreen, Director and Professor, Institute of Disaster Management and Vulnerability Studies at the University of Dhaka.

The pilot iPrepare campaign was launched earlier in 2014 with over 300 students in attendance for the campaign launch at Hanoi School of Public Health and Vietnam National University in Vietnam.

The first prize was awarded to Ms. Huong Trieu and Ms. Pham Thi Ha Thu for their video covering flood preparedness in the Muong La district in Vietnam. The winners had the opportunity to travel to ADPC headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand, and share their presentation at the 6th Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction.

“It was sometimes difficult to interview people, but it is important that we know about disaster and communicate about the risk,” said Ms. Huong, happy and surprised for receiving an award.

Her team mate also agreed that the campaign was very important for them.

“When we made this video, we learned more about different solutions to reduce disaster risk. We want to contribute something to our community,” said Ms. Pham Thi Ha Thu.

The iPrepare campaign has come a long way since the pilot project and plans on continuing to show university students the importance of community awareness and the importance of disaster preparation.

Students from the University of Dhaka and Daffodil International Universities hold up their Certificates of Participation. The Lenovo tablets for the national winners rest on the table.