Philippine Evacuation Center through the Children’s Lens
Keywords:
early childhood, experiences, feelings, evacuation center, flood, children's drawingsAbstract
Evacuation as a pre-disaster response necessitates safety in schools. Anchored
to this need, this study was conducted to describe the experiences and feelings
of 30 six-to-eight-year-old children in an evacuation center of a flood-prone
barangay in the Philippines. The respondents were asked to draw their
experiences inside the evacuation center and eventually interviewed on what
they drew, what they felt during their stay inside the center, and what they
expected to see to make their stay comfortable, happy, and meaningful. A
frequency count was followed to tally and categorize the participants'
responses according to their variables. Five categories emerged for children's
experiences: sensory experiences, bio-physical experiences, family-related
experiences, social activities, and rules imposed by the parents; seven arose
for children's feelings, namely afraid, happy, sad, pity, difficult, frustrated, and
hungry; and the children provided two recommendations: material things and
social relationships. The study proposes developing programs and
interventions, designing evacuation centers, and food planning for young
children.
