【Philippines】Developing a community that will not succumb to natural disasters

In September 2011, this region was hit by a large-scale typhoon and sustained serious damage. Fortunately, Macabaclay Elementary School and the pupils were all safe. The region was also hit by a typhoon in 2004, and it has become an urgent task to conserve the environment in order to reduce disaster damage. In the Children’s Forest Program, we are teaching the children that environment conservation activities will lead to the prevention and reduction of damage by natural disasters like typhoons.

In environment education classes, when we ask the pupils about immediate environmental problems, they quickly raise “illegal logging”, “slash-and-burn”, “illegal hunting of wild animals”, “wildfire”, etc. The children, who are clearly aware of the problems facing their community and have learnt countermeasures, are determined to improve the destruction of nature and develop “FURUSATO comfortable to live when they are grown up.