Children in Goma and Sheffield will co-create disaster risk stories to teach their peers about floods and volcanoes. The project connects four partner schools across two cities facing very different hazards—flood risk in Sheffield and volcanic risk in Goma—through an online community where students share their perceptions. A workshop in Sheffield will bring together teachers, researchers, and local organisations to turn these student perspectives into multilingual, curriculum-aligned educational materials, produced by artists in both cities. This matters because children are disproportionately affected by disasters but are rarely included in conversations about disaster risk reduction. Hazard education is typically top-down and siloed, with little connection between different communities at risk or between researchers and educators. GO-SHARE addresses this gap by testing whether an international partnership can make child-led hazard education more effective and scalable. If successful, the project will produce freely available teaching resources that strengthen risk resilience in young people while giving educators professional development materials. The approach could also offer transferable insights for disaster risk reduction globally, showing how connecting diverse communities can enhance understanding of vulnerability and exposure across different hazard contexts.
View original technical description
Impacts of environmental disasters are escalating globally. Climate change is increasing the magnitude and frequency of climate-related hazards, and urbanisation and conflict are increasing societal exposure to geophysical hazards. Mitigation of impacts relies on hazard awareness, a key element of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). Effective hazard education is essential for risk resilient communities, with young people critical stakeholders and agents for future change. However children, a group disproportionately impacted by disasters, have been underrepresented in conversations about effective DRR. Hazard education is typically top-down and siloed, with a lack of holistic knowledge sharing between different communities at risk and a lack of connection between researchers, educators and organisations responding to hazards. Innovative and creative methods of engaging with children, and inclusive participation that brings community perspectives to the forefront, have been shown to positively impact hazard understanding. These projects typically focus on a single community for local context, and may be expensive or difficult to scale up. GO-SHARE builds upon best practice by exploring the impact of a meaningful international partnership on child-led hazard education. GO-SHARE is a unique international collaboration that brings together a diverse team of academics, teachers and stakeholder organisations from Goma (the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Sheffield (the United Kingdom) with a shared aim of strengthening risk resilience in young people through exploratory and participatory action research. We hypothesise that building stronger partnerships between diverse communities at risk, and co-creating educational disaster risk stories that reflect experiences of young people in those connected places, will strengthen local risk resilience while creating an accessible resource that enhances understanding of vulnerability and exposure in global contexts. We will connect four partner schools in Sheffield and Goma, two cities in very different multi-hazard contexts, in an online community to share perceptions of both climate-related flood risk (Sheffield) and geophysical volcanic risk (Goma). We will hold an in-person workshop in Sheffield that brings together partners and stakeholders to synthesise findings, exchange knowledge and expertise, and co-create DRR narratives shaped by student perspectives. These narratives will be turned into a multilingual creative output by artists in Goma and Sheffield. This curriculum-aligned “glocal” science education deliverable will be trialled in partner schools, and then broadly disseminated. Our partnership will co-design and co-deliver the project, and evaluate and monitor outcomes as the work progresses. GO-SHARE will lead to improved hazard awareness in young people and positive outcomes for both communities involved, through the international co-creation of new hazard education tools across distinct environments and hazard contexts. We will also generate knowledge and professional development materials for educators, and transferable insights for the DRR discipline on the impact of child-led dialogue and participatory creative practice within a novel international collaboration. We ensure sustained and far-reaching impact through strategic partnership with DRR and education stakeholders in the DRC and UK. Our partners are committed to disseminating outputs to schools, the public and policymakers, locally, nationally and internationally. Our collaboration connects expertise in volcanology, education, flood risk, participatory methodologies, sustainable development, and equity, diversity and inclusion to bridge gaps between silos. We are committed to developing this exciting multidisciplinary partnership beyond the life of this funding, and will do this by supporting early career researchers, creating new academic teaching collaborations, and working together on long-term plans for further funding applications to strengthen hazard education.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know