Joint action plan for psychological and physical support activities for children affected by the earthquake

Damascus-SANA

The Ministry of Education is working on developing a joint plan of action with the Vanguards of the Baath Organization, the Revolutionary Youth Union and the Teachers Syndicate during the next stage regarding the activities approved by them for psychological and physical support for children affected by the earthquake in Syria.

The action plan, which was presented today during a meeting of the concerned authorities, targets the stages of basic education in its first and second cycles, and the secondary stage. The basic education stage, the first cycle, includes activities to enhance the ability to overcome difficulties, build bridges of positive communication with the community, and direct attention to popular activities, sports, and entertainment such as music, drawing, and games. While the primary education stage of the second cycle includes, in addition to the previous activities, activities to promote humanitarian initiatives, take responsibility, community support activities and enhance empathy skills, while the secondary education stage requires activities to promote a culture of volunteering, participation in shouldering responsibility, carrying out recreational educational activities and promoting a culture of empathy.

The action plan requires allocating an emergency budget for psychological and physical support for those affected, distributing activities and sharing roles between plastic arts, theater, folk arts and music, in addition to voluntary youth initiatives and awareness seminars to educate the community on disaster management, how to deal with it and respond to its repercussions.

Participants in the meeting stressed the need to develop a plan for approved activities for psychological and physical support for children affected by the earthquake by strengthening extra-curricular activities with the presence of psychological and social cadres and specialists, and allocating a lesson for the psychological counselor in the school to talk with students about disasters, their repercussions and how to manage them.

The participants demanded the implementation of psychological support sessions for students and the development of a plan to support the teacher from the psychological and material side, and the inclusion of materials in the curricula that talk about disaster management, stressing the role of the media by providing psychological support programs for students.

The Minister of Education, Dr. Darem Tabaa, stressed the importance of the meeting in terms of developing an executive plan for post-rescue procedures and direct intervention to develop psychological support for affected families and children, and setting a plan to provide entertainment, sports, music and cultural programs for them and to get out of the existing crisis situation, and rehabilitate them psychologically and socially, stressing the need to strengthen capacity Self-care for children and parents.

For his part, the head of the Revolutionary Youth Union Organization, Sumer Daher, stated that the plan aims to unify the efforts, activities and events presented by the concerned organizations and the Ministry of Education to avoid the effects and repercussions of the earthquake and unify the plans and start implementing them on the ground through committees that were distributed according to the supervision and needs of each affected area separately to function These committees implement plans on the ground in the affected provinces.

The head of the Vanguards of the Baath Organization, Dr. Muhammad Izzat Arabi Katbi, explained that children are the most affected by war and earthquakes from a psychological point of view, so there must be a psychological and social support plan for them to return them to the educational process.

While the Head of the Teachers Syndicate, Waheed Al-Zaal, confirmed that the goal of the plan is to provide psychological support to students, teachers, parents, and the local community in order to reach a normal life for students away from negative things.

Rehab Ali and Bushra Barhoum

Follow SANA's news on Telegram https://t.me/SyrianArabNewsAgency