The Capital Area Chapter of the American Red Cross in conjunction with Allstate Insurance Co, announces its support of the new pilot initiative called "Masters of Disaster", a curriculum on disaster safety for children and their families in the Madison County School District. The "Masters of Disaster" Children's Disaster Safety Curriculum will help teachers integrate disaster safety into their daily lesson plans and objectives by providing lessons, activities and demonstrations that they can use to incorporate a hazard-related topic into the core academic subjects. Core subject areas that could incorporate the program include science, mathematics, social studies, language arts and fine arts.

Funding for development of these materials was provided through a generous grant from the Allstate Foundation. The Allstate Foundation grant was a prelude to more frequent collaborations between Allstate and the American Red Cross. Both organizations are currently exploring additional opportunities for partnership.

Locally, the Capital Area Chapter is piloting sections of this curriculum on Hurricanes for grades K-8 at schools in the Madison County School District. This pilot project will test the feasibility of the lessons, activities and materials and will provide evaluative feedback to the American Red Cross national headquarters regarding the content and lesson plans so the program may be improved before final release.

48 American Red Cross chapters across the United States are supporting schools in their areas to pilot selected sections of the "Masters of Disaster" materials. More than 770 classroom teachers are involved in pilot testing these materials in 23 states, as well as Guam and Puerto Rico.

The entire "Masters of Disaster" curriculum will include lessons featuring general disaster preparedness, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes and lightning. Statistics from the National Weather Services and the US Geological Survey reveal that these natural hazards cause more deaths, injuries and property damage than any other hazards. The target date for finalizing and releasing "Masters of Disaster" is late spring 2000.

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