Elementary School teachers in Selo and Musuk Boyolali were taking picture with the staffs of KARINAKAS and the facilitators of Abisatya Association after the Disaster Area Mapping in the office of BPBD of Boyolali, 2 April 2016 (Photo: Ferry)
Geographically, Indonesia is located between three earth’s plates, i.e. Eurasia, Pacific, and Indo-Australia. This meeting position makes Indonesia has a fertile land, natural wealth, and mineral underneath it. With the condition of the world which is getting older and the climate changes and weathers, the position makes the Indonesia’s archipelago becoming unstable, easy to shift, and disaster-prone.
Natural disaster is a phenomenon happened because the threatening and vulnerable components work together systematically, so that they cause the risk toward the community.
Threat is an event, natural phenomena or human activities which are potential to cause the death, injuries, property damage, socio-economic disruption or environmental damage.
Vulnerability is a condition which is determined by physical, socio-economic, and living environmental factors or processes which escalate the vulnerability of a community towards the impact of hazards.
Risk is a chance from the emersion of bad impact, or possible losses in the terms of death, injuries, losses, and property damage, livelihood activities disruption, and economic or environmental damage which are caused by the interaction of hazards and vulnerable condition.
The hazards to watch in Boyolali are caused by 2 things: Firstly, the geology aspect in the form of the eruption of Mount Merapi, landslide, and earthquake; Secondly, the aspect of Hydro-Meteorology in the form of flood, tornado, and drought.
Most of the villages in the Musuk and Selo Sub-districts of Boyolali District, Central Java are the supporting villages located in the slope of Mount Merapi. Each year, the villages in this area are experiencing significant drought. Each dry season, the people should fight for getting the clean water. In addition, the potential disasters in that place are windstorm which often occurs around January-February, the eruption of Mount Merapi, and landslide.
With this situation, KARINAKAS in order to build the resilient community through “Building Resilient Community” program, assisting in 4 villages in the slope of Merapi, i.e. Cluntand dan Sruni Villages, Musuk Sub-district and Suroteleng and Samiran Villages, Selo Sub-district, so that they can reduce risk of the drought by their own power or with the external helps.
This program is the sequel of the development of 96 units of biogas to reduce the using of firewood, so it is expected that the forest in the slope of Mount Merapi is sustainable. Along with the village community, KARINAKAS did the studies of participative disaster risk and from that, it is found that the drought happens each year and counting.
KARINA-KAS with Perkumpulan Abisatya took the further measures to introduce the disaster risk reduction related with the climate change and its impact towards the environment.
This issue is important to be spread to the community or stakeholders in the slope of Mount Merapi. Then, a step which can be done is cooperating with teachers and schools in the assisted area of KARINAKAS, which in turn, they will help giving the awareness to children and wider community.
The activity of the PRB module composing is started from the Elementary School level (SD). It has the objective for teachers understand the context of disaster risk reduction related with the issue of climate changing and the impact towards the environment; they can make a Disaster Mitigation Curriculum which is appropriate with the KARINAKAS assisted areas in Selo and Musuk Sub-district; they have the life-skill in the middle of disaster, and eventually the schools have hazards map and module for disaster risk reduction (PRB).
The module which was composed by Anna, Mia, Teguh, Ratri, Nining, and Agus from Perkumpulan Abisatya was started from the assessment, village level disaster areas mapping, module preparation, and module implementation in the school level.
It is expected that PRB module which was initiated by KARINAKAS is not only implemented for Musuk and Selo Sub-district, Boyolali but also be spread to many other areas which have the same hazards level. (Author: Ferry T. Indratno, Translated by: Mita))
