The Global CDMHA at USF, Tampa is a Technical Secretariat for the Hemispheric Eduplan.

The Hemispheric Eduplan was created in 1992 by the Organization of American States (OAS) who initiated a process to create and implement a hemispheric action plan for disaster reduction of the education sector.

Technical Secretariats for the Eduplan operate at the community-level, such as a single school, an educational level, an administrative level, or a geographic level. They operate within an institution or across cultures and nations in collaborative partnerships. Their actions start locally but offer national, regional and hemispheric impact. They work to develop programs, encourage citizen participation in making schools safer, and link with experts focusing on the physical infrastructure.

The Hemispheric Eduplan is supported by the UN/ISDR and PAHO, and offers a three-pronged focus for mitigation activities, centered on physical infrastructure, citizen participation and academic aspects. The Global CDMHA at the USF will focus its Eduplan efforts on issues related to academic aspects at all levels (Elementary-Secondary-College).

As a new Technical Secretariat the Global CDMHA at the USF started in the Spring of 2002 a partnership with the International Hurricane Center at Florida International University (IHC/FIU) in Miami in putting together a pilot program called "Developing a Culture of Mitigation Through Education", a K-12 initiative. The initiative, targeted towards elementary, middle and high school students, aims at reducing the potential for damage to vulnerable communities from hazards through continuous, wide ranging, dynamic, practical effort that promotes "showing" rather than "telling" based on an interactive approach.

The program was piloted during Spring 2002 in five schools (2 elementary schools & 3 middle-high schools) in Florida, Jamaica, and Costa Rica. The grade levels we worked with were 3rd, 5th and 9th through 12th grades. While the emphasis on specific preparedness measures may vary depending on the given hazard, the focus will always be on damage reduction.

The ultimate objective of this project is to create a pilot version of an educational product on natural disaster mitigation that may be adopted for system-wide delivery both in Florida and in the Latin American & Caribbean region. A workshop for educators was conducted in Miami in September 2002, with "train the trainers" type of activities, and brought together about 52 teachers from the Miami area.

The program is being extended to other schools every year, with the goal of making it part of the national curriculum in the various countries where it is piloted. For more information about the "Developing a Culture of Mitigation through Education" initiative, please contact Mrs. Isabelle M. Simon at or call 813-974-2907.