SKIA Senior High Completers to enhance natural flood preparedness.
A partnership initiative to help protect the SKIA College and Academy co-campus at risk from flooding has engaged students to research and enhance community natural flood management practices.
Amidst climate phenomenon such as the monsoon rain, El Nino or La Nina, local communities get year-round rainfall from the warm water surrounding Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago. “Because excessive rainfall causes extreme events of yearly inundation from the Pulangi,” according to college dean Lourdes V. Mastura, “our master mentors assign the senior high service learning portion of the semester to case applications.”
This strategy draws upon nature and natural exposures likely to cause collateral hazards. Each portfolio is made to showcase risk reduction, using natural methods, in applied setting. Senior students have wrapped-up their Immersion Learning Oral Presentations last Tuesday, March 12, 2019 at the Founders’ Hall.
Director Mastura who serves in the Metro Cotabato Water District (MCWD) board identified the project goal to determine which natural sites provided the most relevant component into the earth science and life science courses.
“The normal structure for service learning approach is to engage students in practical applications,” she noted. The initiative presented in applied learning format is based on actual service learning observations. STEM cohorts chose the MCWD bulk water treatment plants near Simuay River and Dimapatoy River as project sites.
Disaster preparedness can be achieved via partnership with emergency agencies:
(1) By a combination of natural flood preparedness for the disaster prone villages within suburban areas and upstream towns; and
(2) With sustainability of waterways that have been clogged by solid waste and garbage disposal from the riverbank communities.
Rocaya G. Edres, the school principal, explained: “The first step is partnering with community leaders to gather secondary data for vulnerability index. It is demonstrated using a simple approach as that for flood hazard map.”
Grade 12 participants during the action phase of 2018 SHS Immersion Program admittedly reflect: “Considerations are given to vulnerability analysis a step further in higher education. Immersion, training and exercises for understanding the risks and early warning of incoming inundation can provide firsthand experience so the students and families become aware of what to do in case of an emergency.”
All these add up to ‘real-world’ chance for survival, the presenters concluded.
Smart summer immersion volunteering service
A cadre of young and older adults is set to mobilize clean-up operation of the inundated low-lying areas in Sultan Kudarat town.
This out-of-door opportunity to release physical energies dubbed “Smart Summer Immersion” is expected to develop group volunteering service starting summertime. Facilitating the service learning process involves a faculty team or staff work to coordinate with the primary leaders of the community.
This brings a variety of measures that work together on catchment scale along five rivers system that pass through villages in Banubo, Bulalo, Calsada, Limbo, and Salimbao.
The project will kick off with its first community event to take place during the summer break. Barangay councils are encouraged to lead and involve residents as well as land owners in the catchment areas in “clean-up operation” and suggest how they can support the evacuation plan. SKIA buildings are marked as natural high grounds to gather families quickly and move their children immediately before water levels rise.
Studying sustainability specific to “capacity concept” can be captured in a simple framework: preparedness.
Associate dean Ameir Abdulmaguid announced: “Faculty mentors agree that sustainability is a conceptual tool to incorporate environmental change across the curriculum.” Abdulrahim Sangkua acts as director-in-training program (mudir) for guidance. Master mentors headed by assistant principal Abdulkadir Mangelen can figure out better the outreach phase, tiered into basic task and advanced task for group assignment.
A hands-on write up to ascertain different types of “residual risks” for flood risk assessment is a technical rigorous task. Typically it goes beyond K-12 collaborative capacity for “real world” emergency response to reduce flood risk over the semester.
“We invited other stakeholders to come along to this community event to talk further to our key delivery partners,” SKIA’s president Michael O. Mastura told his senior staff.
Expecting that residents need to find out more about improving water quality and biodiversity, he went on to clarify: “So we embraced sustainability as a school strategic initiative to align campus and community ideas as well as communicate the consensus.”
Flooding became a significant suburban problem for the SKIA co-campus and off-campus environs brought about during the past decade by typhoon Frank in 2008 and typhoon Ondoy in 2009.
A preliminary analysis of the impacts of inundation and waste disposal on school improvement plan and college growth was based on comparison between existing information pertaining to flood levels and the records of rainfall and flash flood during 2008-2009.