Impact of disasters caused by natural hazards
On October 20, 2024, Hurricane Oscar, a category 1, hit the eastern region, severely affecting the province of Guantánamo. Just days later, on Nov. 6, Category 3 Hurricane Rafael wreaked havoc in the west, with the greatest damage in Artemisa and Havana. Added to this were two strong earthquakes, measuring 6.0 and 6.7 on the Richter scale, which on November 10 shook the southeast of the island, especially impacting the province of Granma. Approximately one million 400 thousand people suffered the impact of these disasters, of these 600 thousand critically. In addition, damage is recorded in more than 500 schools, which are attended by almost 100 thousand students.
In response, UNESCO, as part of the United Nations System Action Plan in Cuba, with the support of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Cuba and funding from UNESCO's SDG 4 Emergency Fund (SEF), designed and implemented a tour of the most affected provinces, Guantánamo, Granma, Artemisa and Havana, from December 4 to 17, 2024, which included:
- Socio-emotional support for teachers and training in this tool, with a focus on resilience.
- Delivery of educational and recreational materials, as well as the realization of cultural activities with the support of local educators and artists.
- Funding of youth-led school projects.
At the end of this route, 24 schools in 8 municipalities were visited, reaching 5,600 students and almost a thousand teachers in the country.
The increasingly frequent disasters caused by natural hazards in the region have an unequal impact on countries and social groups, disproportionately affecting children, young people and women in their physical and mental well-being, as well as in their educational continuity. In response, UNESCO is developing solutions that integrate emergency, development and peacebuilding. Together with countries, sustainable preparedness and prevention strategies are being designed to anticipate the impacts of disasters.
Forward
Disaster recovery is a complex and long-term process that requires building educational capacities and ensuring the empowerment of communities, especially youth. The UNESCO Office in Havana together with MINED are now preparing a Seed Fund for initiatives led by young people in the affected areas. The theory of change is that their involvement and transformative leadership can strengthen their life purposes and thus strengthen their learning trajectories over time, while contributing to the endogenous development of their territories.
Social-emotional learning at the center of the response
For some years now, 91Â鶹¹ú²ú¾«Æ·×ÔÅÄ been proposing socio-emotional learning from a transformative perspective as a broad and profound route of social and educational change aimed at cultivating feelings of solidarity and empathy towards others, appreciating cultural diversity and committing to the care of nature.
In a recent publication, UNESCO called on countries to strike a balance – in teaching and policy – between the cognitive, behavioural and affective dimensions, to value the latter as a priority on an equal footing with literacy and numeracy and to promote their mainstreaming in all aspects of education from the classroom, the curriculum to the entire system. These studies complement the long scientific evidence on the power of social-emotional learning to achieve a greater connection with school, reduce school dropout, improve academic performance, employability and interpersonal relationships, reduce anguish, anxiety and depression, and traumas. and other benefits.
Although more and better knowledge production is needed in the area from Latin America and the Caribbean, preliminary findings from UNESCO and other specialized agencies show that evidence-based, culturally adapted, and dialogically implemented socio-emotional learning with educational communities can be an accelerator of the necessary educational transformation and a tool to face and respond to emergency situations.