Post-Disaster Educational Continuity in Fiji and the Impact of Disaster Risk Reduction and Education in Emergencies Programming

Education in Emergencies (EiE) is defined as “the provision of uninterrupted, high-quality learning opportunities for children affected by humanitarian crisis”.  The Comprehensive School Safety (CSS) Framework has emerged more recently and focuses also on non-emergency contexts; with educational continuity as one of its key goals. Save the Children Fiji (SC Fiji) has supported EiE capacity development in Fiji from June 2010 onwards. Key projects implemented to promote EiE and CSS include the EiE capacity building project (2012-2014) and the Pacific Coalition for the Advancement of School Safety (PCASS) project (2015 -2016). The promotion of EiE and the accumulation of disaster response experience in the education sector in Fiji has been associated with a series of disaster events in recent years. This includes the floods in 2012, Cyclone Evan in 2012 and Cyclone Winston in February, 2016. Disaster response interventions in general, and specifically the response to Cyclone Winston, provide an opportunity to explore how EiE and CSS interventions shape disaster response approaches in the education sector. The research, therefore, aims to build the evidence base on the relevance of EiE and CSS to the disaster context of Fiji. The research focuses on two main topics:  the impact of disasters on education in Fiji, with respect to understanding the factors that enable or impede education continuity. The second part of the research looks at the key results of Save the Children’s 2012-2014 EiE capacity-building project, and other program efforts on the disaster preparedness and response capacity of the education sector.