The Ministry of Education and Training on Tuesday organised the closing ceremony for the Education Initiative for Sustainable Development (ESD), started in March 2013 jointly with the UNESCO.

Katherine Muller Marin, the UNESCO representative in Viet Nam, said that the initiative aimed to set up an online training programme for elementary school teachers in Thua Thien-Hue.

She added that the initiative also aimed to provide knowledge and skills to the students, their parents and the society to adapt to climate change, prepare them to cope with natural disasters and help them preserve biodiversity.

After 21 months of implementation, the programme has successfully educated students and their parents about climate change and natural disasters.

The selected schools were helped to develop and implement their plans on assessing and preventing possible disasters and threats, as well as train their teachers in ICT to improve their capacity.

The province and the district authorities were assisted to develop an action plan and a strategy to minimise the risks in the management of Vietnamese heritages, particularly the Hue Citadel, and improve decision making based on the use of satellite images.

Since August 2013, the programme has trained five elementary schools that are often affected by natural disasters, to assess their possible risks and threats, including the Thanh Toan School in Huong Thuy district and the Quang Loi School in Quang Dien district.

VNS/VNN