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I am a (science) education researcher and look at most things in the world through the lens of education. On disaster (or anything else), the questions I ask are - e.g., why should we teach about it? What should we teach about it, and how? How can we support teachers to teach about disasters in their classrooms? My training in educational research has equipped me with the theories, tools and methods that can be utilised to approach these questions. I am hoping that these knowledge, experiences and skills can cross-fertilise with EcoGovLab's expertise in anthropology, SPS and environmental governance.

Our Purpose

One of our greatest responsibilities is to prepare the next generation to meet the challenges they will face in the 21st Century, with a deep commitment to the rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship. We have a unique opportunity for a community dialogue about the civic values, knowledge, and skills that K-12 students should learn and practice in our public school system. We will create strong community support for our schools to provide effective civic education for students to be successful in college, career and citizenship.

OUR MISSION

The mission of the Civic Education Center is to restore civility in America by creating opportunities for youth to learn and practice civic values and democratic skills.

About Us – Civic Ed Center

Civic Education Center | Fresno CA | Facebook

Goals

• Teach the vision of the Founders and the triumphs and tragedies of our history.
• Teach civil dialogue on controversial issues and democratic deliberation.
• Integrate science, technology, literature, media, arts and math with civic projects.
• To promote teacher understanding of connections with the State Seal of Civic Engagement, Social Emotional Learning, and Ethnic Studies.

Summer Institute – Civic Ed Center

The Mission of CV YEA is "Our mission is to fight environmental injustices in the Central Valley through connecting like-minded individuals". 

CV YEA is based in Fresno, CA and led by Executive Director Kamryn Kubose (interview), who we met during our visit to Golden Charter Academy. CV YEA takes part in Clean Vehicle Empowerment Collaborative. The board consists of master's students and environmental activists based in California.

This article is supported with the following:

- Anecdotes from survivors whom have experienced the turmoil of living in the remains after Katrina.

- Showing the disproportional treatment of individuals based on wealth. Those wealthy enough are able to relocate, but those who live in poverty are less likely able to relocate and forced to live in subpar conditions.

- Showing price gouging done by private companies in order to gain funds from federal funding.

Adriana Petryna is a professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania researches the cultural and political aspects of nuclear science and medicine.

The article uses data from sources such as the Aid Worker Security Database, interviews and focus groups. The Aid Worker Security Database, as aforementioned, produces very little data in comparison to how large the problem is suspected to be. 

• "My argument is that while humanitarianism, in conjunction with certain feminist movements, may work to medicalise and depoliticise gender-based violence, the politics of gender actually creep back in undercover, revealing problems at the heart of the humanitarian mission – problems that undermine the very idea of a ‘humanitarian space’ critical to humanitarian action, that is, a space that tries to temporarily hold the political at bay."
• "MSF argued in their essays on the Congo that one reason for not taking rape seriously was that women who had experienced sexual assualt were not ideal subjects of aid; since they could not be easily identified with images of innocence."
• "I argue that the shift to gender-based violence as the exemplary humanitarian problem could not have happened without the prior move to medicalise gender-based violence, and render it a medical condition like all others."

The data is visualized in photos or photosets.

The three quotations that more capture the message of the article are: 

"Regardless of the specific national roadmaps, however, nuclear safety has returned to the international stage with a vengence." - I love the use of 'vengence' because it's such a powerful descriptor.

"Numerous case studieshave documented that meaningfully engaging lay communities in decisions... enable greater vigilence and raise confidence about individual emergency preparedness."

"The real challenge of a disaster involving nuclear facilities lies in how to handle the unexpected, unpredictible, utterly novel, and barely intelligible chain of events unfolding in real time."