The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency program MEMA 4 Kids stopped by Dana Road Elementary Tuesday to share safety tips and have fun with the students.

Davina Studley, who led the program, said their mission is to impart the students with new information on how to stay safe in the event of a disaster. MEMA 4 Kids also features costumed characters to help teach the students safety lessons.

“Our focus is schools, to go out and educate kids about disaster preparedness, how to get prepared, what to do if there’s a disaster,” Studley said. “For example, if there’s flooding, you don’t want to get in the water, you could drown, you don’t know what’s in the water, things like that. So we go out to schools and teach them that.”

Studley said there is a lot of information they can provide to teach the Dana Road students.

“In Mississippi, we have a lot of different natural disasters, and we want them to be ready because you never know what’s going to happen,” Studley said. “You may or may not be able to get out of your home and we want to make sure kids are ready. So that’s what we do.”

The hope of the program is that students will not only learn about disaster preparedness, but also take it home as well. One of their tools for doing this is their cast of costumed characters, such as Delta Dog, who excited the students when entering the room.

“Our program is very interactive. We go through the disaster preparedness kit, we talk about the disasters, what they need to do and how they can be ready so they can go home and talk to their mom and dad,” Studley said. “They get a free book so they can learn and take it home as well. At the end we have the characters.”

Mema 4 Kids also has a website, mema4kids.org/en/, that has further information about the characters, disaster preparedness and educational videos featuring the characters.

Studley said the students at Dana Road responded great to the program.

“Vicksburg has been amazing,” Studley said. “This is our third or fourth time down here. We’ve been to several schools down here, and it’s just been awesome, and being at Dana Road has been awesome.”