This resource aims to encourage young people to think beyond the mix of horror and despair, sadness and grief that follows disasters. Although it is prompted by the Asian earthquake, it raises questions that are common to many emergencies.

We are aware that you may work with students and young people who have relatives in the region hit by the earthquake. We are sure that you will be mindful of their sensitivities when discussing the issues raised in this resource.

The assembly kit is based on a core performance of several voices exploring the questions raised by the Asian earthquake. There is an optional extension to the core performance which is more suited to young people aged 14–16.

After the core performance, there are several ‘add-ons’ which you may like to use to prepare for and enhance the performance. There is also a follow-on activity to further explore the themes.

The assembly kit is suitable for young people aged nine to 16. You will also find guidance about adapting the materials for different age groups within the assembly kit.

• To help young people understand the practicalities of the relief effort
• To help young people understand the process of tracing family members after a disaster
• To help young people realise that disaster reporting by the media often follows a recognisable pattern and to think about why this is
• To help young people begin to think about how the tasks of rebuilding after a disaster and being prepared for future ones continue mainly out of the public eye
  

The script below takes the form of an active discussion, with different voices questioning and trying to make sense of the news they hear of the Asian earthquake. They are suitable for young people to read out as part of a school assembly or as a youth group drama performance. For some schools and settings, they may be most appropriately read by adults.

When it comes to casting parts, please note that:

• voice one reads neutral information, from the media
• voices two and four are knowledgeable and do most of the explaining
• voice three is questioning, an averagely informed person trying to learn
• the narrator could be the senior member of staff who normally leads the assembly

Read the parts with young people in preparation for the performance. Ensure they understand the meaning and the language and discuss any issues that arise. To reinforce their understanding, you may like to ask them to use their own words in places.

Core performance suitable for nine–16 years

Narrator
It is very difficult for us to imagine the horror of the destruction of lives and families in the earthquake that struck South Asia on 8 October. We have seen pictures of people, some young children, being pulled from the rubble. We have seen homes and schools so destroyed it is impossible to imagine there being any survivors. We see pictures in newspapers and on the television. We want to help and we feel great sadness that it should have happened. We feel this particularly here in the UK, with so many connections between families here and in the affected area.

In some parts of the UK, nearly every family in the community will know someone in India, Pakistan or Afghanistan who has been affected by the earthquake.

Others will not be so personally involved, but will still feel deeply upset seeing so much suffering.

Voice one
"Anger grows among survivors." That was a headline last week from BBC news online. The story was about disaster survivors waiting for emergency aid and feeling the help they desperately needed was taking too long.

Voice two 
It was about the Asian earthquake. But it could have referred to almost any recent disaster. There was criticism of the aid following Hurricane Katrina. The president of the United States publicly apologised for the failures.

At the beginning of this year, there were questions about whether the relief effort in the Asian Tsunami last December was good enough.

You can be pretty sure that in the future there will be criticism of the relief effort in the first few days following the shock of any major disaster.

Voice three
Why is that? Is it because emergency aid is always late and useless? It seems that relief efforts are slow, the help goes to the wrong people, or is wasted. Maybe aid agencies are just no good.

Voice two 
No, that’s not true. Look at it this way. Major disasters like earthquakes cause terrible human suffering and survivors are desperate for help. It is important to hear about survivors’ frustration, but this doesn’t mean that aid agencies are doing a bad job.

Many people die and people get trapped under buildings which have collapsed. How can these people be rescued? It’s difficult and dangerous to lift parts of buildings without machines.

People who have survived cannot go back to their houses. How can they find food, shelter and water? There are tens of thousands of people who need help, but roads are blocked after the earthquake.

Aid agencies have long distances to travel and borders to cross to get to the country of the disaster. They have to find out as much information as possible and then find practical ways to get help to the survivors. Because aid agencies are impartial, they have to decide who needs most urgently and help them first.

Voice four 
Think about the tens of thousands of people who have lost touch with their family members. Some are living in the UK, anxious for news of family living in the earthquake area. They feel desperate and powerless being so far away. Others live in the devastated region itself. Both are naturally desperate for news of their friends and family. It is the biggest thing in their lives. It stops them sleeping, and is all they can think of.

Voice one 
There is an organisation which helps find lost family members after an emergency, and which can pass messages between them. This is one of the services carried out by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the 182 National Societies of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

Voice two  
But immediately after a disaster, Red Cross Messages are not a priority. That is why in the few days after the earthquake hit, the Red Cross said that, for the moment, it was unable to actively search for missing family members or send messages to them.

Voice three 
Why not? Surely it would be good to stop the worry and put people in touch with each other?

Voice four 
Yes, but it is not the most important task. First, you need to rescue people who are trapped and try and save their lives. You need to take care of the survivors. What do they need? Do they need shelter, food, blankets, or medical services? That means assessing their needs, finding out where they are and exactly what they lack.

Voice two 
Remember that this is a remote area. There are some villages in the mountains that are very hard to reach. Communications are difficult. There has been heavy rain, and there is a risk of mudslides and more deaths and injuries. Many roads to the region have been blocked by mudslides and earthquake damage. This has made it difficult for relief teams to reach the victims.

Voice four
Aid agencies have to decide which tasks are the most important. Do you stop trying to distribute blankets and food or clear blocked roads so that you can record lists of names and contact details to help families get in touch? These are very difficult decisions, but they are the practical day-to-day choices of disaster relief.

Voice two  
That doesn't mean ignoring the desperate need for people to know where their relatives are. It means doing it more simply. So the International Committee of the Red Cross did launch a website (www.familylinks.icrc.org). People in the disaster area can register themselves to let relatives know that they are safe and well. Their families can consult the list of names. Worried relatives anywhere in the world can register the names of people they are seeking information about.

Voice four 
It is not perfect, because the website is not confidential and the information can’t be confirmed by the Red Cross at the moment.

If finishing the performance at this point

Narrator
Think about the pictures we have seen on television and the headlines we have read in newspapers of people suffering after the Asian earthquake. Is it useful to look in more detail at the stories behind the pictures and the headlines? Does it help us to answer our questions – Why have some people been waiting days for help? Why have some people not heard news of relatives? Perhaps this is a useful way of looking at all news stories that we hear and read.

Optional extension performance suitable for 14–16 years

Voice three 
If aid agencies are doing their best, why are there headlines like "Anger grows among survivors"?

Voice four
Journalists do their job of trying to interview people close to the disaster and let the world know what is going on. They talk to people who have suffered greatly and who are desperately in need of help. It is not hard to find people who need more help faster than it can be provided.

Voice two 
Journalists find it harder to communicate the experiences of the coordinators of the relief effort. The situation is more complicated and uncertain, less easy to explain to television viewers. It is quickly changing and of course relief workers are working long, long hours in awful conditions, trying to save lives and reduce suffering. That is not a good time to explain to news reporters the whole background to what is being done and why.

Voice one 
The more you look at reports of disasters, the more you see a familiar pattern. It is not just the frustration among survivors that occurs over and again. It begins with the initial reports, and the estimated death tolls, the pictures of local rescue workers with little equipment pulling at rubble with their bare hands, the foreign relief teams flying out, the launch of appeals for funds.

Then comes the criticism of the relief effort, and after that the search for "miraculous" survivors – the few who are pulled out days after experts said it was unlikely that anyone would still be alive. These are familiar stories, common to many earthquakes.

Voice three
Why does the international community only send aid and relief when a disaster happens? Is there anything that can be done before a disaster happens?

Voice four 
The areas that were affected by the earthquake are on a fault line and therefore at risk from an earthquake. People in such areas will have strategies to be prepared for an earthquake. Another important way to prepare is by reinforcing buildings to protect them from earthquake damage. It is relatively cheap to do this, and the result would greatly help relief operations that happen after a disaster. For example, if hospitals had remained standing after the earthquake, injured people could be treated there, rather than having to wait to be taken to other towns and cities.

Voice two 
The trouble is, it is difficult to raise money for a disaster that might or might not happen. It is natural for people to feel a humanitarian response to the suffering they see on their televisions. But perhaps it is more difficult to ask people to donate money to help before a disaster.

Narrator
It is true that there is less media coverage of rebuilding and of preparing for a future disaster. Do we now remember the India earthquake of 2001? Had we heard about the city of Bam before the earthquake of 2003? What is happening now in the areas affected by the Tsunami in 2004? Perhaps we need to find a way to think for longer about what happens to all those tens of thousands of people caught up in immense disasters, such as the Asian earthquake. Perhaps we should ask why so much of what happens takes place away from any publicity.

Music add-on
Music can be an important additional dimension to any assembly performance, but it is not always easy to know what kinds of music would be appropriate. Discuss with young people the kind of music that might suit the assembly. What mood of music would suit how people feel?

Talk about how music can help survivors. Would those waiting for news seek solace in familiar music? Would they celebrate with music? Would those who hear bad news use music as part of their grief? Do any young people have music which originates from the region affected by the earthquake?

Words and pictures add-on
Consider using topical photos from newspapers or from the internet and first-hand witness accounts from survivors. You could use this as a basis for discussion to prepare for the assembly, to help young people empathise with those affected.

If you have the technology, you might scan them in then project them as a backdrop to the assembly. A montage or selection could be an effective beginning or ending to the session.

For those using the optional secondary section, you might look at recent headlines to trigger discussion. You could then put these together as a backdrop to the assembly.

Speaker add-on 
Is there a local speaker available to meet your group and talk about the situation in the area affected by the earthquake? Ideas might include:

• a local representative from an aid agency who can speak about the relief effort taking place
• a journalist who has reported on a disaster and can speak about the motivations behind a story
• a member of the local community with links to the region who can give young people some background about the area to increase their understanding
  

Groups who are interested in the media coverage of disasters, might like to see the advice given to aid agencies by media experts. Here is advice published in the most recent World Disasters Report. Called “Tricks of the trade – how to ‘sell’ forgotten emergencies”, it helps aid agencies boost the media visibility of long-term, complex emergencies.

These are the practical tips:

• Invest in media relations, communications training and expertise, down to the local level.
• Keep up a dialogue with the media: provide background material on complex emergencies, but not 15 minutes before deadline.
• Put a number on it: death tolls give journalists pegs to hang their stories on. And they go some way towards quantifying the unimaginable.
• Bring in the big names: it’s controversial, but enlisting celebrities can work. The press follows the famous face and ends up reporting on the cause.
• Make it visual: nothing sells a story like a good picture. In disasters, aid agencies may have the only photos available.
• Be creative and proactive: tell the bigger story through the eyes of individuals. Fit what you’re doing into the news agenda. Organise trips for reporters.
• Never give up: in this game, persistence really does pay off.

You might like to start a project in which young people monitor the news coverage of this or a previous disaster. Arrange a follow-up session and discuss the extent to which the tips given here match how the news is covered on television and in newspapers.