The Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DoDMA) has finished distributing disaster risk management source books in public primary schools.

The department’s spokesperson, Chipiliro Khamula said they have distributed 16, 656 source books in 5, 552 public schools.

Khamula said the exercise is important because it will assist in mainstreaming disaster issues in primary schools.

He said if learners start understanding disaster issues at primary level the knowledge will help in building resilience among their communities.

“We hope to mainstream disaster risk management in primary schools as well secondary schools with a vision that the students would employ the knowledge and reduce risk,” Khamula told YFM in an interview.

He also spoke about the possibility of extending the exercise to private primary schools should funds permit.

“We envisage the distribution to extend to private schools as well because we only managed to distribute these books since we were financially constrained,” he said.

DoDMA is still developing a secondary school source book on disaster risk management.

The two source books have been developed in consultation with the Malawi Institute of Education and the ministry of Education with funding from United Nations Development Programme (UNDPP).