PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:
Natural disasters often damage or destroy school infrastructure, threatening educational opportunities and risking the lives of schoolchildren. The Global Program for Safer Schools (GPSS) aims to make school facilities and the communities they serve more resilient to natural hazards.
The GPSS works to reduce the physical impact of disasters on school infrastructure and minimize the negative educational outcomes that result from disasters by improving the quality and enforcement of building codes, building institutional capacity for risk reduction, and integrating disaster risk reduction into the design, planning, and construction/retrofitting of schools. The initiative partners with ministries of finance, public works, and education, to integrate risk considerations into new and existing education investments to increase resilience on a large scale.