A blog post by Kieron. 23 October 2024.
Recently an Open University project (ASSIK- Anak Setara SIaga Kebencanaan)
ran workshops for teachers about how to create songs for their classrooms as part of teaching young children about natural disasters and what to do to when they happen. A key part of the workshop was making their songs, and associated activities, accessible for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). To support this, the workshop groups included disabled students and early career researchers.
The ASSIK team included people from the Open University, ROCHMI (Research of Community Mental Health Initiatives), University of Indonesia, Jakarta and the Disability innovation centre (UNESA, Surabaya). [see below]
[The banner reads song and movement based inclusive disaster mitigation workshop]
Why did we do this?
Indonesia is a large and diverse nation, with a population over 280 million people. It sits on the pacific ‘ring of fire’ and experiences one of the highest rates of natural disasters in the world. When these events occur children are the most impacted group and in Indonesia the risk of death and injury is profoundly higher for young children with special educational; needs and disabilities.
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International research has shown that disaster risk reduction education (DRRE) in schools can help mitigate this situation, to some extent. However whilst the Indonesian government has thoughtful and explicit polices which give everyone the right to DREE, in practice children’s access to DRRE is often lacking and provision for children with SEND is largely absent (Sheehy et al.. 2022). For example, Indonesian kindergartens lack materials and approaches that are inclusive and accessible (Isrona, et al., 2021). In response to this, our project created sign supported big books to teach DRRE in a way that was fun and engaging for all the class. These are whole class story books with one or two signs associated with each page of the story (Rofiah et al, 2021). At the workshop we asked participants for feedback to develop new books on the topic of tsunamis and fires.
In developing this approach further, our ongoing work has highlighted 1) the importance of creating DRRE activities that are locally and culturally relevant and 2) the need to include disabled people in the development and implementation of DRRE (Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, 2017; Sheehy et al., 2022).
Song and dance have a rich historical and current significance in Indonesia (Salazar, 2011 cited in Siregar, Dasar Negeri,and Pekanbaru, 2024.) Although overlooked within formal DRRE (Sutton et al., 2021), there is some evidence that drawing on local music and song can enhance the success of DRRE (Sutton et al, 2021, Kurniah, Agustriana, and Kusumah, 2023, Tunip et al, 2018). In this workshop we therefore supported participants group to create their own songs, and each group included disabled students or researchers to advise and shape the inclusivity of the activities and the final songs.
Each participant received a workshop bag [translation inclusive disaster response for children] containing some sign supported big books.
Later in the week we visited a school of some teachers who had attended the workshop. Teachers and children performed traditional songs and dances, as well as showing us their newly created songs combined with sign supported big book activities.
We also created a facilitators manual so that the workshop approach could be replicated by others in future.
References.
E104 Introduction to childhood studies and child psychology. Unit 8 Children’s lives and models of disability. OU online (open.ac.uk) This introduces different ways of thinking about disability, and examines some Indonesian DRRE research
GFDRR -Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (2017) ‘Disability Inclusion in Disaster Risk Management Promising Practices and Opportunities’, pp. 1–56. Available at: https://www.gfdrr.org/sites/default/files/publication/GFDRR Disability inclusion in DRM Report_F.pdf.
Isrona, L., et al (2021). “Monster VIPs”: disaster preparedness training for children with intellectual disabilities. In E3S Web of Conferences (Vol. 331, p. 04008). EDP Sciences.
Kurniah, N., Agustriana, N. and Kusumah, R.G.T. (2023) ‘Applied Science for Early Childhood: Disaster Mitigation in Bengkulu City Kindergarten’, in, pp. 225–232. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-012-1_30.
Rofiah, K. et al. (2021) ‘Fun and the benefits of Sign Supported Big Books in mainstream Indonesian kindergartens’, International Journal of Early Years Education [Preprint]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09669760.2021.1956440.
Sheehy, K. et al. (2022) ‘Inclusive disaster risk reduction education for Indonesian children’, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 0(0), pp. 1–17. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2022.2115156.
Siregar, L., Dasar Negeri, S. and Pekanbaru, I. (2024) ‘Teacher’s strategy to support student’s creativity in cultural arts and craft learning’, International Journal of Social Science Education, Art and Culture, 3(1), pp. 2828–1241. Available at: https://doi.org/10.24036/langgam.
Sutton, S.A. et al. (2021) ‘Nandong smong and tsunami lullabies: Song and music as an effective communication tool in disaster risk reduction’, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 65. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102527.
Turnip, S.S. et al. (2018) ‘Finding A Fun and Engaging Media to Deliver Disaster Preparedness Messages for Younger Children in Indonesia’, International Conference on School’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience Education in Practice. – TW, Taipei, Taiwan, Province of China, pp. 1–12.
Reach is not just about numbers or geography. It refers to the extent and diversity of beneficiaries—how many different types of individuals, groups, or organisations your work has affected. It’s about how far your research has travelled across sectors or communities, and how many kinds of people or systems it has touched. It’s not “where” or “how big,” but how broad and inclusive.
Testimonials (e.g. from teachers, learners, policymakers)
diversity of audience
Letters of support or impact statements from organisations or community leaders
Surveys or evaluations with beneficiaries
Before-and-after data (e.g. attendance, learning gains, access to resources)
Policy citations, curriculum changes, or programme uptake
Media coverage highlighting community outcomes or educational transformation
Funding or adoption by others (e.g. NGOs, ministries, schools)
