‘Little Paramedic’ trains children on First Aid

AMMAN — Profoundly shocked by the sudden death of a 12-year-old child who passed away after a school door fell on him, 22-year-old Maisaa Al Zoubi decided to launch "Little Paramedics", an initiative that seeks to raise awareness and knowledge of children on safety, first-aid and live saving emergency procedures.

"That boy died tragically because the paramedics took too long to respond and no one around, whether schoolmates or adults, knew what to do when the accident happened," Al Zoubi recalled, stressing the importance of spreading knowledge on basic life saving skills in society.

The young woman started the initiative in 2016, aiming to help children between the ages of 11 and 18 become self sufficient and alert actors in cases of emergency. 

"We receive all children in our programme, including kids with Down Syndrome and persons with disabilities, as we want all of them to become independent adults able to prevent accidental losses of life," Al Zoubi said, noting that Little Paramedics offers practical workshops on first aid, CPR and how to handle emergency situations.

"Usually, our workshops last up to five hours and up to three days for paramedic awareness. We teach children how to perform first aid in emergency, among other skills," the university student said, adding that they also run a programme for the community as a whole. 

In a year, Little Parademics has already trained 430 children, and partnered with several local organisations like I Learn, Injaz and I-Dare, according to Al Zoubi, who is a fellow with the Badir fellowship programme for Jordanian promising social entrepreneurs.

The mother of one of the children who participated in a workshop highlighted: “Little Paramedics is covering something the education system missed to cover.”

Agreeing with that comment, Al Zoubi stressed how essential it is to tackle this "often overlooked problem" of lack of awareness on safety and first aid. "Little Paramedics is more important than maths and physics because, if we lose our children due to the absence of life saving skills, school knowledge will not be useful. It is very important to teach them first aid so they can keep growing and learning in a safe way while knowing how to protect themselves," she noted. 

The young woman voiced her hope to see such trainings be conducted as a mandatory course in the educational system. "In my opinion, teaching children how to protect themselves is an extremely important priority as they are the centre of any future aspirations we may have so we need to make sure they are safe," she stated, noting that "we do not just aim to make the children know about first aid and paramedics, we also help them understand and build their capacities from a very young age".

She recalled how Hind, a child who participated in one of the workshops told her afterwards “now I am not scared when I am away from my mother; I feel like I can take care of myself”.

Noting the rising number of working parents, the Little Paramedics founder said such trainings are essential in empowering the children to know how to react and protect themselves if an emergency arises while their parents are away.