With this project, we wanted to make some changes to the school's environment and get people thinking about road safety.
The ideas
We wanted to participate in ‘Your Ideas, Your Initiatives’ to create awareness in people even outside of the Dulwich community. We also thought that some of the reasons road safety and awareness is a vital issue is due to these reasons:
• More than 1.2 million people die in road traffic crashes every year.
• As many as 50 million people are injured or disabled by road traffic crashes every year.
• As many as 50 million people are injured or disabled by road traffic crashes every year.
• Road traffic injuries kill nearly 1.3 million people a year and are the leading or second leading cause of death among youth and young adults worldwide
• Taken globally, road injuries killed 1.3 million people in 2010 and were the eighth leading cause of death
• According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), road traffic accidents kill more people around the world than malaria, and are the leading cause of death for young people age five to twenty-nine
• Every day, road traffic crashes claim nearly 3,500 lives and injure many thousands more. The vast majority of those affected are young people in developing countries.
• Road traffic deaths accounted for about 70,000 premature deaths in China
• China’s road death rate is the highest in the world
We have interviewed the guards, parents and students and questioned them on their opinion of the importance of road safety and the impact our project will have on them.
For example, most older students don't wear helmets when they are on their bikes; this means that since the younger students see them as role models, they will think it is cool to not wear a helmet, which is not a value that children should be brought up with. For this reason, we need to educate the older students at Dulwich and have them understand that they have the responsibility of influencing the younger children's ideas about road safety. This also applies massively to the teachers and staff in the school; for example, at our Global Values Project presentations, we talked to a woman who used to be in charge of road safety in Scotland and she admitted that she didn't wear a helmet, and she couldn't give an answer as to why! This is extremely worrying, because if the teachers don't think they have to wear a helmet, the students
definitely won't either!
The initiatives
First, we made some changes to the school's environment to get people thinking more about road safety.
• We changed the school bell for a couple of days to promote ‘Stop, Look, Listen and Think” for kids of all ages when they cross the roads. This was really effective and important, and when we talked to a lot of people about it, they said that they really enjoyed having the new bell. A lot of them find the bell catchy so when they cross the roads, they will hopefully stop, look, listen and think.
• We also found and designed some brightly coloured posters that reinforce the jingle to 'stop, look and listen'. We found different posters for different age groups and positioned them around the school, including the bike park area where a lot of kids at DCS park their bikes during school times.
• In term three we are working with the junior school to promote wearing helmets to school. As a group, we explained the importance of wearing helmets and then gave each kid a helmet to decorate with stickers and brightly coloured pictures. They will be able to wear their personally designed helmet to school when riding their bikes.
• We also put a notice in the daily bulletin, notifying everyone that they need to make sure they cross the roads carefully and notifying them of the dangers of roads in China.
• We made a video to give information about road safety and why we need it in the school. This was shown to students to give them basic information about the project and some facts to show how serious the problem is all around the world.
In conclusion, we think that our global values project went really well because we all put good effort and a lot of hard work and research into this project, and now that the project has ended, and we have spoken to some people about it, we seem to have made an impact on the community on this global issue. We think it was a success because it got people discussing road safety around Dulwich and acknowledging that there is a problem. As we have finished with the project now, we all realize its huge success; more than half of the people wear helmets to school, and the guards are definitely more vigilant of potential hazards for young kids. So as a group, we are all really happy with the progress we have made in and around our school.
