Close to a million instructional booklets on how to prepare for emergency situations will be distributed in the next few days to thousands of elementary school students throughout Israel. The booklets will be distributed as part of the Homefront Command’s instructional campaign for emergency situations, in coordination with the Education Ministry.

The new campaign will distribute about 800,000 guidance booklets, with the goal of preparing the population for emergency operations. The instructional booklets, which include amongst other things an instruction file for teachers, a work booklet for students, and a CD with explanations, will be distributed as part of the second step in the national instructional campaign “To be protected is to be ready” which started two months ago.  Students will take part in an education hour that will be dedicated to preparing them for emergency situations, and will be expected to complete the assignments within them. 

This is the Homefront Commands first instructional campaign aimed at children.

“In 2003, we instructed the students on preparing for war, today, we understood that students that are counseled on a daily basis will better understand how to act during an emergency situation,” explained the Head of the Population Department in the Homefront Command, Colonel Hilik Sofer.  “These booklets strengthened the comprehension amongst children that preparedness reinforces the feeling of being able to deal with the situation,” added Yossi Simentov, director of the Coping with Emergencies Unit in the Education Ministry.  “At the moment that you prepare a student on a daily basis and in a practical, rather than a dramatic way, there is a chance that his coping abilities with an event in real time will be a lot better and more organized.”

Starting next year, the Homefront Command will expand its program of preparing students for emergency situation. As of now only the fifth grade has received lessons on the matter but in the coming months the first, third, seventh, ninth and eleventh grades will receive four hours of lessons on emergency situations including earthquakes, rocket attacks and unconventional weapons attacks.