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This document presents general practices of safe school construction and the retrofitting of existing school buildings through typical design and drawing of schools as developed and practised in Aceh and West Sumtra Earthquake Response programmes. The programmes aim to create greater awareness of safer school construction in new schools, while at the same time making sure that the existing school buildings are safe.

Indeed, there is consensus that no strategy for poverty reduction and development can ignore humanity's need for water and sanitation.

While there are specific MDGs relating to water and sanitation, it is an indisputable fact that the achievement of all other MDGs are dependent on access to clean water and improved sanitation facilities.

At Ashaiman alone, 2,015 children, each bearing a plastic drinking cup, formed a 2,015-people queue to remind duty bearers of the 2015 deadline for the meeting of the MDGs on water and sanitation.

Fast Car: Travelling Safely around the World is a racing game that helps you to learn about HIV and AIDS prevention and takes you on a tour of some of the World's Heritage sites. The game aims to provide young people with accurate and reliable information about HIV prevention, intending to educate and entertain as well as promoting healthy behaviour. In this game, the player can race on circuits on five continents, and virtually visit some of the UNESCO World Heritage sites. It also presents images of sites and interesting facts about them as players race by.

Bangkok – The Thai Government today launched the “One Million Safe Schools and Hospitals” initiative in Bangkok, with top government officials from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministries of Education, Public Health and Interior and partner agencies promising to make safety a priority at 43,004 schools and hospitals.

n recent years, Thailand has been experiencing intense disasters with increasing frequency. A series of flash floods in October and November 2010 – declared “one of the worst natural calamities” to hit the country – killed more than a hundred people, displaced thousands and affected six million in 38 provinces. Thousands of students were forced to evacuate their schools, with more than a thousand schools reportedly damaged.

“Our Government and partner agencies have pledged to spread awareness among 43,000 schools and hospitals to maintain or upgrade their safety standards.

These lessons may be freely copied and used in a classroom but they remain the copyrighted property of the author.

Syrian army and security officers have detained and tortured children with impunity during the past year, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch has documented at least 12 cases of children detained under inhumane conditions and tortured, as well as children shot while in their homes or on the street. Human Rights Watch has also documented government use of schools as detention centres, military bases or barracks, and sniper posts, as well as the arrest of children from schools.

“Children have not been spared the horror of Syria’s crackdown,” said Lois Whitman, children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Syrian security forces have killed, arrested, and tortured children in their homes, their schools, or on the streets. In many cases, security forces have targeted children just as they have targeted adults.”

Some of the arrests took place in schools. “Nazih” (not her real name), a 17-year-old girl from Tal Kalakh, told Human Rights Watch that in May 2011, security forces entered her school and arrested all the boys in her class, after questioning them about the anti-regime slogans painted on the school walls.

However, with almost 39% of the world’s population or over 2.6 billion people living without improved sanitation facilities, the report also points out that much more needs to be done to come close to the sanitation MDG target. If the current trend continues unchanged, the international community will miss the 2015 sanitation MDG by almost one billion people.

NAIROBI, Kenya, 7 February 2011 – The foundation for key improvements in the quality of teaching and learning was laid recently in Kenya with the launch of a manual on implementation of the 'Child Friendly School' concept. The manual, developed by education experts with support from UNICEF, provides guidelines to teachers and helps them understand how to use this model effectively.

Under the Child Friendly School framework, schools must not only help children realize their right to a basic education, but are also expected to equip them with the skills to face the challenges of a new century; enhance their health and well-being; guarantee them safe and protective spaces for learning, free from violence and abuse; raise the teacher morale and motivation; and mobilize community support for education. A child-friendly school assures every child an environment that is physically safe, emotionally secure and psychologically enabling.

t aims to develop a learning environment in which children are motivated and able to learn. The minister of Education called on communities to support schools in providing a quality education for children:“We must address all facets of a child’s life. We must take care of psycho-motor development, physical development, the environment the socialization of the child,” he emphasized.

As the tsunami hit her school in Sendai, kindergarten teacher Junko Kamada stood in the window of a second story hall to block the children from seeing the destruction caused by the 1.5-meter wave. Amid dirt-caked chairs, soiled books and damaged equipment, Kamada, 60, is preparing to bring the students back to the school, about a mile inland from the coast. The children will also need counseling to deal with the trauma they have experienced, psychologists say.

Schools resumed two days ago in northeastern Japan, the epicenter of the March 11 magnitude-9 earthquake. Classes --some held in homes and makeshift spaces -- are providing a safe place for children to reunite with friends and a semblance of familiarity amid the nation’s worst disaster since World War II.

While adolescents attuned to the reality of death may act out their trauma, younger ones find it harder to articulate their distress, she said. People who suffer psychological ailments such as depression in childhood are 10 to 20 times more likely than others to experience those problems in adulthood, according to a 2010 study in the journal Social Science & Medicine. Affected individuals tend to leave school earlier and earn about 20 percent less over their lifetime, the authors found.

KABUL, Afghanistan, 5 July 2011 – New classrooms, chairs and desks mean better education at Shirino High School, one of the schools renovated and refurbished with funds from the Government of Japan as part of its ‘1,000 Classrooms’ initiative.

There were lots of problems last year, our students were sitting outside in the sun and they didn’t have a classroom,” recalls Shirino High School Headmistress Qamar Hadi. “There were no chairs or tables for the students.”

With new classrooms, the number of children enrolled in school has increased and retention rates have improved

UNESCO staff in Gaza recruited Souktel to create an SMS alert/survey system that warns parents and their children of any danger happening near local schools. The service forms a key part of UNESCO’s Crisis and Disaster Risk Reduction project, which aims to ensure that schools are secure community spaces.

"In conflict zones, when it's not safe to leave your house to get information, mobile phones can bridge the gap and keep everyone connected," says Souktel co-founder Jacob Korenblum. "This basic technology allows aid workers, educators and local families to stay in contact at all times." 

Here’s how it works: At each school, principals and teachers are given password-protected access to a web interface, where they can send SMS alerts to all parents’ mobile phones. In an emergency, they could write, "Attack near school today, please keep your children at home." Once the violence has ended, another message could go out saying, "Shelling has stopped; please come to school this morning."

Education under Attack  Students and educators in situations of armed conflict face violence every day. Schools and universities should be safe havens, where they can work toward a better future. Instead in many places they have become the targets of violent attacks for political, military, ideological, sectarian, ethnic, religious or criminal reasons. Students, teachers and academics are putting their lives at risk simply by showing up. A UNESCO study found intentional attacks of these types by state security forces or non-state armed groups in at least 31 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East between 2007 and 2009.Our vision We seek to establish a world in which all who wish to learn, teach and research, at all levels and in all forms of education, and all those who support them, can do so in conditions of safety, security, dignity and equality, free from fear, consistent with the principles of mutual understanding, peace, tolerance and academic freedom.Our mission To catalyse enhanced prevention of attacks on education, effective response to attacks, improved knowledge and understanding, better monitoring and reporting, stronger international norms and standards,and increased accountability.

KHAIRPUR, Nov 8, 2011 (IPS) - Sixteen-year-old Noor Bano believes nothing short of a revolution will convince the men in Malangabad – her remote village in the Khairpur district of the Sindh province, some 460 kilometres from the southern port city of Karachi – to treat women as equals.Only then, she says, will women and girls be free from forced marriages and be safe from domestic violence. Her words, unusual for such a young girl hailing from the hinterlands of rural Pakistan, take most people by surprise.