In order to continue to provide opportunities for our young students to participate in international exchanges, the Ministry of Education (MOE) selected 26 students from all over Taiwan to form an exchange delegation to visit Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, from January 31 to February 4 to exchange and share experiences with local young students and to showcase our achievements in promoting Disaster Risk Reduction Education (DRRE).
The overseas training program was arranged by MOE in cooperation with the Miyagi Prefectural Government, and included experiencing and practicing various DRRE courses in Matsushima Nature Retreat, sharing DRRE with students from Tagajo High School, visiting the International Research Institute of Disaster Science at Tohoku University to attend a lecture for disaster prevention knowledge, heading to Ogawa Elementary School and Minamisanriku to conduct disaster prevention training, and staying with local host families to learn how local residents respond and adapt to the threat of disasters.
Deputy Director of the Department of Information and Technology Education, MOE, Mr. Qiu Ren-Jie, encouraged the participants to turn their knowledge, creative ideas and enthusiasm into practical actions. In this way they can gain a better understanding of the Japanese society, humanities, and disaster prevention, and gradually realize the goal of deepening the roots of disaster prevention education through participation in the exchange process, and continue to spread the seeds of DRRE upon returning home.
The MOE stated that global climate change has led to the frequent occurrence of extreme weather events and the increasing complexity of disaster patterns. The MOE is promoting a change in the concept of DRRE by replacing the standard answer with the principle of judgment, establishing a campus disaster management evaluation system as the core framework for promoting disaster prevention campuses, and integrating the existing resources of various counties, cities, and ministries to accomplish the goal of making all schools disaster prevention campuses. Since 2020, we have co-organized the "International Youth Leadership Camp for Disaster Management" with the National Fire Agency of the Ministry of the Interior and the Water Resources Agency of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and have completed three domestic training sessions. Through selection, study, training, and hands-on experiential courses, the camp aims to develop participants' awareness of disaster risks and enhance situational imagination, combine various disaster issues, and emphasize leadership potential and development skills, and thereby, increase young students' sense of mission and practicality in promoting disaster prevention education.
In addition, the MOE has continued to promote DRRE for young children, establishing customized disaster prevention campuses in special education schools, incorporating the traditional wisdom of indigenous peoples in DRRE, holding the International Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction Education to learn from international experiences in promoting DRRE, discussing disaster prevention issues with teachers and students in Japan via video calls, and building disaster prevention partnership. Through these initiatives, we hope to deepen the concept of disaster prevention and enhance the nation's ability to respond to disasters.