As part of School Safety Initiative which encourages the local community to better understand that school must be safe for children, teachers and the community themselves, SEEDS Asia consulted the local community and school stakeholders on the right efforts to make schools safer. The school stakeholders shared the importance of improving school facilities and supporting infrastructure such as roads, bridges and fences.

In September 2009, SEEDS Asia held a planning workshop in their project areas to fund village-level activities which will answer the needs to safer schools. In collaboration with their local partners, SEEDS Asia will provide small amount of funds for several identified projects in a village. The small projects will be carried out and managed by local community. The projects focus on improving supporting infrastructures that will ensure children’s safety during their trip to the school. Such facilities will also help villagers to reach nearby health care services.

The priorities at most villages were fixing school roads, constructing school fence and building bridges nearby a school. These supporting infrastructures will ensure the safety of children and reducing the time that children spent to go to school, especially during monsoon season. Besides, electricity for school buildings was also requested despite pending permission from local authority.

As soon as the monsoon season ended, the local communities in four villages in Dala and Labutta townships will start building one school bridge and improving handrails of three bridges, building fences around two schools and a gate for one school, fixing roads leading to four different schools,  as well as installing electricity at two schools.

SEEDS Asia also looks forward to start conducting trainings on disaster risk reduction, an important need expressed by their beneficiaries as most of them didn’t have any idea on what to do when a disaster strikes.