OVERCOMING NATURAL DISASTERS

As we already shared in the editorial, children and adolescents are part of the most vulnerable populations when it comes to natural disaster situations. Following the recent (April 16th) earthquake in Ecuador, the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion of Ecuador (MIES) is devoted to its populace in this time of need.

In this context, RELAF has paused some aspects of the technical cooperation agenda being carried out with UNICEF Ecuador to focus, on these critical days, on the promotion of appropriate interventions regarding children and adolescents who are without parental care because of natural disasters. To help do this, we have created a practice guide for working with children and adolescents in both disaster situations and lack of parental care. In the short term, we plan to perform a second instance to further develop these guides, and begin training the MIES staff as soon as possible.

We hope these guides are a valuable contribution to the public practices and strategies of Ecuador in times of natural disasters. They seek to prevent the separation of children from their families, ensure early reunification, and the provision of alternative care from families in the community who have the ability to do so, thereby preventing the unnecessary institutionalization of children. They also intend to prevent the uprooting of children from their homelands when local institutions are overburdened, later making family reunification a difficult proposition.