Comprehensive School Safety Framework
Save the Children
Strategic Planning Tools
September, 2015.
CSS STRATEGIC PLANNING TOOLS OVERVIEW
STRATEGIC PLANNING TOOLS
#1 Five Step Process Guide
#2 Stakeholder Analysis
#3 Questions to Promote Integration of Risk Reduction into Ongoing Education Sector Development
#4 Inclusion Considerations for Disability, Gender, Language & Cultural Minorities, Out-of-School Children, and ECCD
#5 CSS Programs, Projects, and Activities Mapping Form
#6 Scoping and Priority-Setting
#7 Capacity Indicators & Capacity Development Planning
CSS STRATEGIC PLANNING TOOL #1 – Five Step Process Guide
SUMMARY:
The purpose of these tools is to support a strategic approach to assessment, planning, implementation and monitoring of Comprehensive School Safety. They are suggested for use in an iterative and ongoing process to engage stakeholders and safety advocates in sharing hazard awareness, concerns, strategies-in-practice and collective planning.
The Goals of Comprehensive School Safety
To protect children and education workers from death and injury in schools
To plan for educational continuity in the face of expected hazards
To strengthen a disaster resilient citizenry through education
To safeguard education sector investments
The goals are approached through engagement of all stakeholders involved in each of three overlapping ‘pillars’.
• Safe School Facilities
• School Disaster Management
•Climate-smart Risk Reduction Education
The framework has five broad steps:
Step 1 Identify stakeholders and advocates
Step 2 Collect baseline data
Step 3 Large stakeholder meeting(s)
Step 4 Report to stakeholders
Step 5 Ongoing communication, action planning and review
This process is intended to move out of traditional silos of knowledge and practice to exchange information and knowledge and build upon it. It recognizes that ‘decision-making’ takes place at all levels of social organization, and that decisions made for large-scale implementation may fail when the groundwork has not been laid amongst those who, in their daily activities, will implement policy. There are also many examples where public awareness, local advocacy, and incremental cultural changes pave the way for enlightened policy-making. It also recognizes that vulnerability reduction is a series of small steps, and that it’s very much everyone’s business.
The methods and tools proposed for launching and managing improved school safety are designed to:
• provide a credible framework for a comprehensive assessment and planning
• serve as a template for a baseline report, against which to recording, monitoring and communicating subsequent progress in comprehensive school safety
• provide a systematic rubric for communicating a complex array of information.
• engage stakeholders in identifying and evaluate risks and resources, determining priorities, and identifying next steps.
• serve as a transparent communication tool to help stakeholders to contribute, understand one another’s assumptions, see their own roles and responsibilities within the larger context of comprehensive disaster mitigation, and become partners in Comprehensive School Safety.
STEP 1 / IDENTIFY STAKEHOLDERS AND ADVOCATESThe first step is to identify and begin communication with potential stakeholders. The first commitment is to develop and be prepared to continuously maintain and expand the stakeholder database. A Stakeholder Database developed, maintained and shared by the lead organizations in comprehensive school safety, is the evidence of a deliberate efforts to identify and involve all of those with a contribution to make. It contains the necessary information to invite participation, keep people informed and involved. This task is much more than an administrative detail - it is at the heart of the community mobilization effort. A growing stakeholder database signifies a growing culture of safety.
Some stakeholders have already been readily identified, and even volunteered, as key players. Others may not initially perceive themselves as stakeholders, but as dialogue proceeds they are encouraged to recognize their ability to contribute, and to sign on as ‘champions’ of comprehensive school safety. The principal at work is that "there is always more room at the table." Everyone is welcomed. With good documentation, and with workplans developed on an annual basis by working groups, newcomers can be rapidly oriented and integrated into the work.
To be sure that potential stakeholders have not been missed, Tool 1.1: Stakeholders in Comprehensive School Safety contains suggestions for the categories of individuals to be reached out to and involved, as well as suggested fields for the database.
The fields in the database are minimally:
First name, Last name, job title, organization, telephone number, alternate telephone number, fax number, e-mail, street address, city, district, province postal code. Additional minimal information on area of interest (eg. Pillar 1, Pillar 2, Pillar 3, or ‘all’) will be helpful.
“The database is comprised not only of organizational representatives, but of individuals. It is tempting in many environments to select a high-level organizational representative, or even an enthusiastic advocate, and hope that that individual will function as a conduit to others in their organization. In practice however, in any organization there are potentially dozens of individuals who are both interested and capable of participating. Relying on a single link, even though it might be the highest in a chain of authority, makes it exceedingly easy for the link to be broken. While these observations are perhaps second nature to organizers, and the very notion of "stakeholder" is fundamental to democracy and governance, it is an entirely novel concept in many peoples cultural, political and social experience.” (GHI, 2005)
STEP 2 / COLLECT BASELINE DATA2.a. Education Sector Snapshot for comprehensive school safety and education in emergencies (See Tool #2: Education Sector Snapshot for CSS and EiE) is a research and analysis report intended to capture key information
• As a shared, factual starting point for advocates, team members, program planners and implementers and new staff wanting to support comprehensive school safety and education sector development in your country.
• As an appendix to an appeal for funding for either education in emergencies or disaster risk reduction in the education sector.
• What you would want any humanitarian contributors to the education sector to read before their helicopter lands.
• As ‘denominator’ information, providing a baseline against which to assess the adequacy, scalability and sustainability of efforts to integrate drr/cca into education sector development efforts.
Potential sources of information for this report are:
• Ministry of Education statistics
• UNESCO statistics
• Reports of disaster and emergency impacts on education (eg. from Global Education Cluster, INEE and similar)
• Education sector and disaster management strategic planning documents
• Key informant interviews
• Project proposals and reports
•Case studies
• Emergency preparedness and contingency plans
2.b. Document collection and review – Thorough data collection begins with an effort to collect available data such as vulnerability and risk assessment, building codes, emergency plans, damage and needs assessment tools, training materials, school curricula, public awareness brochures, disaster response plans, and other documents relating to emergency preparedness and mitigation. This record can then be used for review and summary, as background information and for content and gap analysis. By keeping these easily accessible in institutional memory, the intention is to make it easy to build upon previous efforts, rather than to constantly reinvent them.
Published IEC materials should be catalogued and uploaded in the UNISDR Prevention Web Educational Materials database. http://bit.ly/PWSubmitEdMats The database can be searched at http://www.preventionweb.net/go/edu-materials/
Documents should be given public tags by at least one user (or ‘machine tags’ arranged by organization), so that a list of this sub-collection can be generated as an RSS feed for embedding on web resources.
2.c Stocktaking / Programs, Projects, and Activities Mapping survey – The process of stocking or mapping, to identify and describe strategies or initiatives in use over the past 5 years, is an opportunity to acknowledge all efforts, recognize and build upon experiences and strengths, learn from prior practice, and identify and plan to fill gaps. Ongoing should be part of the collective work of DRR in the education sector. The purpose of sharing this programmatic information is again to help stakeholders to develop a broad vision so that they can appreciate their richness and complexity of these combined efforts, so that they can identify both gaps and opportunities, and to increase a sense of accountability to the larger group.
See Tool #3: School Safety Measures and Initiatives – Stocktaking/Mapping Form or similar can be used to collect this data, and summary report and mapping constructed, to show the changing picture over time.
2.d. Semi-structured interviews with individuals and small groups of key informants –Structured and semi-structured interviews of key informants with expert and local knowledge related to one or more pillars of comprehensive school safety are considered key sources of information.
2.e. Knowledge and action survey – In order to inform the planning process, it is useful to have a simple survey instrument to measure a baseline of risk awareness (knowledge level) and risk mitigation (behavior) found among both emerging leadership and citizens at large, and at both the individual and organizational level. Later these same instruments can be used to measure changes as a result of mitigation projects. Currently, a couple of tools that can adapted for these purposes are the Family Disaster Plan and School Disaster Resilience and Readiness Checklists. Use of consistent tools will permit comparability across countries and organizations, and with academic research literature on household hazard adjustments, and school safety, especially.
2.f. Small Group Stakeholder Meetings & Focus Groups – Visits and meetings should be organized with small groups of stakeholders at academic and scientific institutes, government agencies and departments, with international governmental organizations, with non-governmental organizations in development, health, education and environmental sectors especially, with leaders of community-based organizations, and with business leaders. These meetings can be organized around each of the three pillars of comprehensive school safety.
Discussions are used to learn about the involvement of these organizations in disaster preparedness and mitigation activities, their perceptions, concerns and priorities. Skillful, reflective listening and report-writing will enable facilitators to gather consensual perspectives on analytic themes, and to help stakeholders engage in the process and it's outcomes. These are also a place to take the pulse of participant satisfaction, impact and sustainability. As concerns are acknowledged and documented, stakeholders will begin to look forward to seeing their concerns shared with others.
2.g. Case Studies – Case studies can be documented to demonstrate needs and problems as well as lessons learned and best practices. These case studies will serve to describe in more detail the problems and progress. Positive case studies should enhance institutional memory and provide a real life example for others to follow. Again this process of acknowledging of achievements is very important to the identification of resources, and beginning to see the glass as partially full, rather than largely empty. Recognizing and celebrating successes is critical to motivating the next round of effort.
2.h. Direct Observation - It is especially important for organizers and a wider range of participants to directly experience some of the available training activities and mitigation projects. Staff should be creative in inviting individuals from one setting to accompany them as observers in other settings that they may not have experienced. Too often direct experience is limited to a very small in-group, and the benefit of having an outside witness provide unsolicited testimonials is never experienced.
2.i. Disaster Impact and Vulnerability Assessments – Plans for selection of sample geographic area for survey of disaster impacts and vulnerability of schools may test tools and data collection strategies for reliability and for extrapolation.
STEP 3 / LARGE STAKEHOLDER MEETING(S)A Large Meeting of National Stakeholders is held over the course of one or two days, to share information, review norms, evaluate priorities, discuss collaboration, and form networks and action groups. The first consultative or strategic planning meeting takes place:
• To present, gather and share information and create the opportunity for networking
• To develop a shared understanding of both collective achievements and urgent tasks
• To engage stakeholders in priority-setting and collaborative planning.
• To mobilize systematic and collaborative efforts and to encourage all of the small incremental steps along the way.
A sample agenda would include:
I. Welcome from Public Official(s)
II. Brief introduction to comprehensive school safety and the workshop purpose and process
III. Introductions and warm-up
IV. Report on baseline data collected
V. Report on strategies in recent use (if manageable, 5 minutes per organization, or poster presentations).
VI. Breakout sessions for each pillar of comprehensive school safety
VII. Brief report back from breakout groups with recommendations for action planning.
VIII. Next steps (eg. status report to be written, and formation of workgroup(s) or committee(s) to continue the work
At this meeting, the data collected in Steps 1 and 2 can be validated and expanded upon, with a copy available for editing, and with blank forms allowing participants to submit additional information and materials. A set of Stocktaking/Mapping forms relevant to each pillar should be copied to use as reference in the breakout sessions.
Tool 4: Assessment of Education Sector Indicators Aligned with HFA should be translated to be used to set a baseline for subsequent measurement of progress. Small group should be organized with each group tackling a different level of education sector operation; eg. National, Sub-national, School. Each table should indicate on the form which level of education administration they are covering at the top of the page, then confer, discuss and develop consensus-based rating. These are then collected and the results reported. If more than one table answers for the same level of administration, the scores can be averaged. Participants may reword the indicators, or divide them to better fit their own context. The disaster management and education authorities own self-assessment should be used to adjust any ambiguities in the final collective rating assigned. This can be shared with the group, with the National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction and interested stakeholders.
Tool 5a/b/c: Comprehensive School Safety – Planning. These should be translated into participant and facilitator languages and enlarged to place on the wall . Part b is customized for each of the three pillars.