Civil Protection Clubs will comprise more than 25 thousand Azorean children in an educational initiative to promote civil protection.

The project was presented today by the Regional Secretary for Science, Technology and Infrastructures and aims to raise awareness and teach students to act properly before any risk scenario.

José Contente presided over the presentation ceremony of the project at the Tomás Borba Vieira School in Angra do Heroísmo and stressed that this awareness raising campaign, which will cover all Azorean schools, will also develop the students' response capacity in order to minimise risks in the event of disaster or calamity.

"Schools are places where some risks may arise, as these spaces gather a large number of people, and thus it is fundamental to develop a civil protection culture among children, who will then disseminate the adequate behaviour in risk situations they learned have here at home with their families. Civil protection is everyone's job," stated the government official.

Civil Protection Clubs will provide each school with educational, multimedia and teaching tools with useful directions and appropriate behaviour in case of earthquakes, floods, volcanic activity and others. José Contente added that "our commitment in the dissemination and awareness raising activities is carried out with teaching and audiovisual resources in order to capture the attention and motivation of students. In this case, we will also get closer to students through performing arts with a more appealing and funnier language."

Azores Civil Protection has significantly evolved whether in terms of equipment or in terms of staff, the Regional Secretary stressed, giving as example the number of ambulance crews that increased from 40 to 192 in a few years. The number of ambulances of the SRPCBA (SRPCBA) also grew from 40 to 102. Until a few years ago, we lacked ambulance rescue crews with training in advanced life support; nowadays seventy-eight crew members have completed the course.

The government official recalled that over 22 million Euros have been invested in the barracks and 6 million Euros in the communications network, one of the most modern at a national level. "We have made a major investment in Civil Protection in order to ensure the availability of resources and materials.
 
Investing in safety is always a good investment because there is always a return, the credibility and confidence in our Civil Protection services, either among the Azorean population or among the Portuguese population in general - we have already represented Portugal several times in various initiatives," added José Contente.

Under the different areas of the Azores Regional Civil Protection and Fire Service, we have carried out several training courses that have covered over 25 thousand children with the "Growing in safety" and "5 Rescue Steps" initiatives. The three previous editions of the "Elderly Safety" initiative have covered a total of seven thousand elderly." Furthermore, seven editions of Mass Training in Basic Life Support, targeted at adults, have been carried out on the islands of S. Miguel, Terceira and Faial.
 
Themed seminars; awareness raising courses on the use of fire extinguishers; "Learning to Rescue"; basic civil protection and first aid courses, and the publication of the book “Civil Protection at home” are some examples of training and awareness raising course developed by SRPCBA, involving the Azorean community in the dissemination of a safety culture.