The people in the Chinese province of Sichuan cannot come to rest: after the devastating earthquake of 2008, in which 70,000 people were killed, the ground shook again in April of this year claiming another 200 lives. Now the region is being ravaged by floods and landslides. The members of the emergency education team of the international organisation Friends of Waldorf Education were in Sichuan at the end of June to work with the traumatised people. The teachers, above all, in the schools in the disaster area are suffering from the consequences of serious trauma, Max Henninger from the Friends of Waldorf Education writes.

LUSHAN-XIAN (NNA) – Yang teaches Chinese literature at Lushan-Xian Middle School. His situation is common throughout the disaster area: he lost his house in the 2008 earthquake. There is still some considerable way to go before he will have repaid the interest-free loan for his new house.

But then the earth shook again – and Yang lost his home for a second time within a few years. He only had one day to inspect the damage done to his house. Then he had to return to the school to teach. “He and his family had no time to come to terms with what happened,” Malte Landgraff, coordinator of the emergency education team, explains.

Hence the emergency education measures of the seven-member team focused in the first week of their deployment specifically on the teachers. They require particular support as they are affected by the disaster both privately and in their working lives.

On the one hand, their families are physically and psychologically injured and their houses have been destroyed. On the other hand, the teachers have to deal with highly traumatised children in their lessons. “This twofold stress means that crisis intervention is urgently needed for the teachers,” says the leader of the team, Bernd Ruf.

Particular attention was also paid to training the volunteers from the Chinese partner organisation, the Guangdong Shanhaiyuan Charity Foundation. The aim is that they should continue the crisis intervention work themselves in the future. The organisation is the first anthroposophical foundation on the Chinese mainland and it works particularly to support the anthroposophical movement in China and the advanced training of Waldorf teachers, as well as to promote education in rural areas.

As a result of the earthquake, the foundation also planned a project for the psychosocial stabilisation of children and adolescents which will carry on until 2016 in the region of Sichuan. The Friends of Waldorf Education were asked to come as part of that project.

Teacher Yang does not know where he will live in future. His house is about to be demolished. He is also worried about his family whom he hardly sees at the moment. He was in school at the time of the earthquake, was able to take his class to safety and then rushed home where fortunately he found his wife and daughter unharmed. One day after the earthquake, the 45-year-old teacher was back in the classroom: “My head and feet felt as if the earth was still shaking.”

END/nna/cva

Donations:www.freunde-waldorf.de/en/emergency-pedagogy/donations.html. Select “Earthquake China” from the drop-down list in the Donations box.

Item: 130723-01EN Date: 23 July 2013

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