Auckland Council has spent more than $100,000 on a series of children’s books targeted at disaster readiness in migrant communities
A series of children’s books created by Auckland Council hopes to address the heavy psychological impact of disasters on society’s youngest.
The You Ready? series packages lessons around disaster preparedness with stories appealing to children and aims to reach some of Auckland’s most overlooked communities with versions in Māori, Samoan, Hindi and Chinese.
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The series of four books was launched on Thursday by Auckland Emergency Management, in collaboration with Auckland Libraries, and cost more than $100,000 to get off the ground.
The National Emergency Management Agency pitched in $85,500 with the remaining $20,850 from Auckland Emergency Management.
It’s an initiative that’s been in the works since the middle of last year, when the civil defence fund earmarked $128,500 to try and increase disaster preparedness in migrant communities.
This included $43,000 on a free emergency disaster preparedness conference for Auckland’s Chinese business community, in partnership with SkyKiwi, New Zealand’s most influential Chinese media outlet.
This was an attempt to balance out the disaster preparedness statistics – according to the 2021 Colmar Brunton Disaster Preparedness Survey, Asian New Zealanders are some of the least disaster-prepared people in the country, especially Chinese business owners and managers.
These initiatives were developed in what seems like a different city when it comes to conversations about extreme weather and being prepared.
Auckland of last year was a city that had yet to see the weeks of wild weather in early 2023, which put the impact sudden or heavy rainstorms can have to the forefront of people’s minds.
A number of government projects like the Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment-funded extreme weather survey are now reaching out into the community and identifying the myriad ways the weather events impacted Kiwis.
“Rates of post-traumatic stress disorder among children more than doubled after the 2011 Canterbury earthquakes,” said Melanie Hutton, Auckland Council’s head of resilience.
“Not only are disasters stressful and frightening, but children can suffer psychological harm from the damage they see to their homes and possessions, the effects of stress on parents and from the breakdowns in social networks in neighbourhoods.”
The You Ready? series is intended as a tool parents can use to equip their children.
Each book follows a group of friends facing cyclones, tornadoes, flash floods and thunderstorms. The books then emphasise how the characters use quick thinking and prior knowledge to make it through unscathed.
“Children aged between seven and 12 year olds are at the right age for children to start learning about how to get ready for emergencies and how to keep themselves, and their families, safe when storms or floods occur,” Hutton said.
Auckland Councillor and civil defence and emergency management committee chair Sharon Stewart was happy to see a new approach taken to engage with children on disaster resilience
“Talking about readiness for a disaster and increasing resilience amongst our youngest Aucklanders isn’t easy – we want to make sure they feel well-informed about natural threats in our region, not frightened.”
Hutton said Auckland Council was influenced by ‘Te Hīkoi a Rūamoko’, a book created by Hawke’s Bay Emergency Management using Kahungunu legends and language to teach tamariki what to do in the wake of an earthquake.
She said the book managed to give the “long and strong, get gone” a culturally and age-specific context and reach people the message has previously missed.
That’s something Auckland Council wants to achieve with their book series as well, each of which was developed in tandem with schools from the community – Te Kura Kaupapa o Te Totuku School, Waitakere Hindi School, Sutton Park School and New Zealand Multicultural Arts & Sports Centre.
The books are available via request from Auckland Emergency Management and will be made available in libraries across the region soon.
