“Let’s Get Ready!” Uses 3G and Muppets to Teach Children How to Prepare for Emergencies

This is a guest post written by Blake Tye, a Senior Analyst at Qualcomm Wireless Reach. 

It’s fire season in California. Living in San Diego where we recently had two of the worst wildfires in state history, I am well aware of the importance of emergency preparedness.  Being prepared, by having an emergency kit, a plan for getting help and a plan for connecting with my family should disaster strike is crucial. However, millions of people worldwide cannot say the same thing, especially families living in poverty in hard-to-reach areas. And, young children are a particularly vulnerable population. Through our work at Qualcomm with the “Let’s Get Ready!” program in China, we are helping to change that.

A collaboration between Qualcomm Wireless Reach, Sesame Workshop, China Telecom and China Youth and Development Foundation (CYDF) “Let’s Get Ready!” uses a mobile website that’s accessible to all 3G-enabled smartphones, a mobile app for Android-based smartphones and interactive content featuring the Muppets of Sesame, Grover and Elmo, to engage young children and their families in learning how to prepare for emergencies.

We piloted this program in Guizhou Province because it is a rural region that’s prone to landslides and floods; the province also has the country’s highest concentration of people living in poverty, and safety awareness is low. During the research period, thirty-one families with children ages 3-6 each received a 3G Snapdragon-enabled smartphone pre-loaded with the mobile app, wireless connectivity, a data plan and orientation to the technology.

Through fun activities such as the  digital chalkboard that allows children to practice writing their names and addresses, dial their home phone numbers and draw pictures of their homes or family meeting places; the scavenger hunt that reminds children of the items that go into an emergency kit and the people and places that may be helpful in an emergency; and the engaging Sesame Street videos on emergency preparedness, parents and their young children gained greater awareness of the importance of this issue.

During follow-up interviews after the program’s end, we learned that parents and kids loved “Let’s Get Ready!” One parent described his child’s learning of the program content, stating, “He especially likes the emergency bag activity. Now he knows that he can look for the teacher, the doctor and the policeman when he encounters an emergency. He can also call Mom and Dad.”

Parents also really liked the program’s mobility which enabled them to work with their kids on emergency preparedness at many locations outside the home, such as bus stops, relatives’ homes, school and the police station.

Most parents even said they would recommend the program to other parents. During the four-week study period, about one-quarter of the parents spontaneously recommended “Let’s Get Ready!” to parents of their child’s classmates, relatives, friends and colleagues. They offered the links and, in some cases, demonstrated how to download the program.

Based on this project’s proven effectiveness, the “Let’s Get Ready!” mobile content is now available throughout China, can be accessed for free t from any 3G mobile device and can potentially reach more than 100 million Chinese children. I hope that one day this program will be available to children worldwide.

Learn more about the “Let’s Get Ready!” project here.

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