emse232

Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management

Crisis and Emergency Management

March 2006 Volume 10 - Number 2

Perspectives...

Profile of the FEMA for Kids website - http://www.fema.gov/kids/index.htm
By Mark Phillips

The FEMA for Kids website is designed to teach children about FEMA and provide them a tools to learn more about what FEMA does and what they can do.   The website is hosted by Herman the Spokescrab and is designed to be visually stimulating to kids with bright colors and animated graphics

The website is broken down into several sections

Ready Kids: Provides tools for kids and parents to prepare and plan for a disaster.   The section includes quizzes, games, facts and more.

Become a Disaster Action Kid: Provides the tools and checklists to assist kids in preparing for disasters. It also provides children an opportunity to receive a certificate of completion for going through the exercise.   There also links and information to various freebies that assist in the Become and Disaster Action Kid process.

The Disaster Area: This section provides graphics, animations and descriptions of disasters that FEMA supports.

Get Ready, Get Set . . .: This section provides various tools and short articles that to help support children there the preparation process.

About FEMA: Provides children a short description of FEMA at a reading level that they will understand describing how FEMA helps individuals before and after a disaster.

Games and Quizzes: The title says it all.   Nearly 2 dozen games or quizzes to help children learn about FEMA, preparation and readiness.

Disaster Connection, Kids to Kids: Artwork and letters of disasters created by kids for other kids.

What’s happen now? A state-by-state guide of recently declared emergencies.

The Library: Links, pictures, maps, books, videos, photos, etc.

The website also contains training guides and other useful guides for parents and teachers to assist them in teaching children about disasters and preparedness.   Overall, the website is well-designed website designed to help engage children in emergency preparedness.   The website is part of the kids.gov initiative.