Cemaden Education: Network of schools and communities for disaster prevention

The Cemaden Education project– created in 2014 at the National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters – CEMADEN, which is connected to the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication, works with schools located in cities with risk areas for socio-environmental disasters.

Cemaden Education’s goal is to contribute with creating a culture of disaster risk perception, in the context of Environmental Education and the construction of sustainable and resilient societies.

Metaphor: each participating school becomes a microlocal Cemaden, a place for research, climate monitoring, knowledge-sharing, and understanding and issuing disaster warnings. Also, through participatory management, the schools can intervene in their communities. 

Creative use of new information and communication technologies within three complementary lines:

• Citizen Science, research, local data collection, analysis and sharing of results online;
• Information Sharing, through a collaborative system (crowdsourcing) between participating schools via the project website: http://educacao.cemaden.gov.br and phone app.
• Com-VidAção – Commission for Disaster Prevention and Life Protection, involving the school, its community, civil defense and other social groups for participatory management of community interventions.

Recognized as an inspiring practice by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – UNFCCC, the Project was indicated as a good practice reference to foster disaster risk awareness in education at the national level. The UNFCCC publication relates the Cemaden Education project to Article 6^th of the Convention, which highlights the need to develop educational programs and public participation to deal with climate change and the prevention of natural disasters.