| Over the past 20 years, natural catastrophes have been responsible for the death, injury, or loss of home for nearly one billion people. The value of property damaged by disasters worldwide has been estimated as high as ;Education is of critical importance following a disaster because disasters are recurrent rather than isolated events, and the same types of catastrophe strike the same nations repeatedly. The understanding that disasters can be reduced through educational strategies is based on the following: (1) Disaster experts now recognize that all disasters have some human causes; and (2) If disasters are human events then they can be prevented by human actions (but only if at-risk groups are taught what they need to know).;In recent years, most international development agencies have come to understand the importance of an educational approach to disaster. However, while they often state their goals in long-term educational terms, frequently they abandon those goals in the field, distributing relief goods and supplies which have a short-term impact. The question addressed by this dissertation is: Why do international relief/development agencies fail to pursue educational program strategies with highly vulnerable groups in disaster-prone developing countries when the evidence is clear that to do so would reduce suffering from disasters and promote long-term development?;To address this question, this dissertation compares relief operations in Ecuador and Colombia undertaken by a large charitable agency which I call A2Z (a pseudonym). An analytic framework (which examines the role of policy, field implementers, the sustainability of project design, and educational considerations) is developed for the purpose of this comparison. In one of the operations A2Z successfully made education the core of its response, while in the other educational projects were peripheral and soon abandoned. In addition to the preparation of two case studies, one about each relief project, the research involved a series of interviews with headquarters staff. |
