As wildfires forced thousands from their homes in Southern California this October, Save the Children helped over 12,000 affected children and caregivers recover.
On October 23, 2007, just days after the fires began spreading across southern California, Save the Children dispatched an emergency response team to hardest-hit San Diego County. One of the first response teams from a national nonprofit to arrive in the area, Save the Children’s emergency responders first focused on establishing Safe Spaces, safe play areas in evacuation shelters and local assistance centers.
Safe Spaces provide children with a designated area where they can play, socialize and get back to the business of being children through structured activities such as art, songs, games, drama and sports. Structured activities can be comforting to children, providing them with a sense of normalcy, strengthening their ability to bounce back and allow them to begin to process their experiences. Within a week, Save the Children had established 13 Safe Spaces serving over 1,500 children. The agency worked in partnership with the American Red Cross and Children’s Disaster Services, Save the Children’s national partners in an effort to provide Safe Spaces to children affected by emergencies.
As the fires were contained, Save the Children focused on the hardest-hit areas of San Diego County. The agency worked with local organizations to reach out to families and communities, while providing a program to help children build coping skills and prepare for future emergencies. Save the Children supported community organizations to provide essential items, including clothing, textbooks, car seats and cribs, and helped several schools, child care centers and other child-focused organizations replace damaged materials or expand their services. Save the Children also helped recover four playgrounds.
Save the Children also provided R&R: Resilient and Ready, a program to help children build coping skills and feel a sense of safety and control while living in a fire-prone area. At the end of each R&R workshop, every child who participated received a backpack filled with evacuation supplies for future use. R&R was accompanied by a care-for-the-caregiver program, Journey of Hope, which Save the Children has used successfully in Hurricane-Katrina affected Louisiana and Mississippi.
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