Community Led

This guide provides practical strategies for engaging children as active participants in disaster risk reduction. It frames children not merely as vulnerable groups but as agents capable of contributing ideas, identifying risks, and supporting community preparedness. Through participatory methods, case studies, and hands-on activities, the guide demonstrates how children can be meaningfully involved in planning, prevention, and resilience-building at the community level.

Safecast designs and deploys open hardware and software tools that enable citizens and experts to collect, share and access high-quality environmental data. Originating from a post-disaster information gap, Safecast promotes transparency, public trust and evidence-based decision-making through open data and community-driven monitoring.

Local Resilience Agents (LRAs) are community members trained in disaster risk reduction, first aid, and search and rescue to supplement local government capacity and disseminate early warnings.

The Student Volunteer Army (SVA) is a youth-led, university- and school-based volunteer initiative in New Zealand, focused on building resilient communities through crisis response and ongoing community support. The organisation mobilises tens of thousands of volunteers to assist communities during and after disasters, while cultivating a culture of service and leadership among young people. Partnerships with organisations and funders amplify SVA’s reach and impact.

The Fire Kills campaign (UK) aims to reduce deaths and injuries from home fires by promoting prevention, early detection, and escape plans. The focus is on increasing the number and proper placement of smoke detectors (including interconnected ones) and improving safe behaviors at home. It offers practical advice on common risks and what to do in the event of a fire. It focuses on vulnerable groups (elderly, disabled, and hearing-impaired) and provides information on possible local home fire safety visits.

This guide provides practical strategies for engaging children as active participants in disaster risk reduction. It frames children not merely as vulnerable groups but as agents capable of contributing ideas, identifying risks, and supporting community preparedness. Through participatory methods, case studies, and hands-on activities, the guide demonstrates how children can be meaningfully involved in planning, prevention, and resilience-building at the community level.

This manual presents the results of the work carried out within the CUIDAR project (Horizon 2020), focused on promoting a disaster resilience culture that actively includes children and adolescents. The manual documents activities conducted in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and the United Kingdom, showing how young people are not only vulnerable subjects but can also become key actors in disaster prevention, preparedness, and response.

“Who’s most at risk?” is a tested and freely available educational toolkit consisting of teacher’s notes, pupil activity sheets, character profiles, key-word lists, chance cards and hazard scenario cards. It supports a 15–20 minute role-play in which pupils adopt the identities of people living in different parts of the world and physically move forwards or backwards according to statements about age, income, education, housing, disability, location and access to information or savings.

The toolkit is aimed at school disaster management, risk prevention, and community awareness. It contains three integrated parts, which are a Participatory School Disaster Management handbook, a school disaster management plan form templates for school use and annual review, and student & community participatory activities.
It is designed to be updated over time (ring-binder approach) and adapted to different contexts.

The CBDRR approach developed by Solidarités International is a participatory methodology that places affected communities at the centre of disaster risk analysis, planning, and action. It combines local knowledge with technical expertise to identify hazards, vulnerabilities, and capacities, and translates this shared analysis into concrete preparedness, mitigation, and response measures implemented at community level.