EvacuKids
Current Programs
EvacuKids @ A's and Aces EvacuKids with Young Audiences and Job1
We are currently in the pilot phase of this program and looking for funding and support. Please email emma@evacuteer.org if you would like to support this project.
The Need
Midwestern schools have tornado drills; California schools, earthquake drills; even New York schools following 9/11 performed mock terrorist evacuations. Most schools prepare their students for disasters unique to their regions. In New Orleans, to date, schools offer no programming devoted to hurricane preparedness. The majority of children in New Orleans schools were here five years ago, tiny witnesses to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. They have their own experiences of packing suitcases, hectic and hurried evacuations, and most devastatingly, not knowing when they might return to their homes. Following Katrina, schools offered counseling; tutoring to make up for lost classroom time; a safe environment when many homes were not; for this we can be thankful. But five years later, and schools have just as much responsibility to their students, as the city does to its citizens; to foster a culture of preparedness should another storm befall us.
Unfortunately, none of the schools we've interviewed do any type of formal hurricane evacuation and preparation work at school.
The Solution
EvacuKids will be an education-based initiative in partnership with Evacuteer.org, an established non-profit 501c(3) organization that trains and mobilizes volunteers in the event of a citywide evacuation. 500+ “evacuteers” have been educated by Evacuteer.org to date. They are inspired individuals who can be called upon to respond effectively, and are aware of their duties in a disaster; responsibilities such as transporting disabled persons, translating for non-English speakers, and tagging pets. Evacuteer.org focuses its efforts on those without reliable transportation, some 30,000 citizens of New Orleans. EvacuKids would be a program tailored to the specific needs of children, those whose families have transportation out of the city and those without it. We would be training them in a different way with different goals, but instilling in them a similar sense of responsibility and leadership in the event of a storm. Schools may be wary at first of reopening children’s wounds left over from past evacuations. The focus of EvacuKids will not be the failures of the past. It will be a journey towards the future. Evacuteer.org challenges citizens to explore their potential for coming together as a community. EvacuKids will be as much an empowerment as an education. It will inform children of what can go right in a hurricane evacuation. EvacuKids participants will be ambassadors to their families and communities. We can educate an entire generation to think positively about hurricanes; to understand a storm’s enormous strength but recognize their individual power to overcome them.
Financial Sustainability/Scalability
Initial costs will be developing the exact programming, reaching out to communities and teaming up with the schools themselves. Evacuteer.org trainers will lend their knowledge to those devoted to EvacuKids, who in turn will work closely with administrators and educators in individual schools to determine the best strategy for programming. Schools may chose to integrate EvacuKids education into the coursework throughout the school year, while others may designate a specific day as “Hurricane Preparedness Day” and bring EvacuKids trainers to work directly with students. The effectiveness of the EvacuKids program will lay in its innovation and flexibility. It can be replicated throughout the Gulf Coast while still keeping overhead low by teaming up with schools and utilizing their own programming budgets.