Making space for children: Planning for post-disaster reconstruction with children and their families

This handbook grew out of a workshop in Cooks Nagar, Nagipattinam in Tamil Nadu late in 2006.

The tsunami response has tended to involve the delivery of shelter with little attention to the implications of housing construction for social reconstruction and community building, and with little understanding of the ways children can be affected. The result is solutions that are frequently out of touch with people's real needs, undermining families coping mechanisms and seriously affecting children's health, safety and emotional security.

Instead, the reconstruction of housing and neighbourhoods in the tsunami response must build on processes that strengthen the capacity of communities to regain control of their own lives with a focus on their children's present and future well being. This must involve the active participation of children in identifying issues and solutions in their local living environment.

This handbook aims at contributing to disaster response reconstruction programmes that not only rebuild the physical living environment but that strengthen the capacity of communities to regain control of their own lives, with a focus on their children's present and future well being.