Action Learning for Traffic Safety

Action Learning for Traffic Safety

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Introduction

African Ministers accepted the Accra declaration 2007 with responsibilities for trans-port and health:

Implement specific education programmes among drivers with regard to safe driving, particularly with issues associated with speed. In this re-gard, promote road safety initiatives at the local, municipal and national levels, for children and other road users.

To reduce the number of accidents, schools need to work with traffic safety and Safe Roads awareness. To create an understanding for what can be done, the schools can start this to work from children´s angle with “My Dream Road”.

The result of this handbook will end in arranging an event in your school showing what and how the students have worked with this issue, who got rewards. In the pro-gram you will invite parents, the road administration and politicians. Don’t forget to share your ideas and results of Safe Road to the net.

Action Learning for Safe RoadsAction learning is an educational process, whereby the participants study their own ac-tions and experiences in order to improve practice. Participants make actions in order

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to make changes, too. Learning is doing by asking questions and then making actions for the shared vision or dream for the good, better, best.

Action learning tackles problems through a process of first asking questions to clarify the exact nature of the problem and then to create solutions through actions.

Questions often begin with why, how, or what do you think about etc. They help peo-ple discover answers, and develop strategies about how to reach the changes. Chil-dren can do this well and even often learn adults new ways to think by reflecting and identifying possible solutions.

The practice of shared vision involves the skills of underlying shared pictures. That fosters genuine commitment. Bouncing new ideas to others through festivals and other events is a nice way to get new supporters.

Understanding Understanding is much more important than memorizing, when study is concerned. This is the kind of learning which requires a willingness by the learner to work with ideas and an eagerness to explore whether an idea has really been mastered. Making mistakes can be a helpful stage in this kind of learning. Because the mistakes can reveal what is not understood and allow the person to make betterments.

This kind of learning requires the learner to work actively with new information and ideas. To achieve this, inspire learners to apply, to elaborate and to evaluate what they have learned.Ask them to create their own ideas and frameworks. The most telling activity of the change is to show others the new practice. Songs, drama, paintings, story telling and texts of all kind can demonstrate it.

Imagine: Good, Better, Best All individuals make their own personal dream. Help the group make one united dream to work with. Dreams can be visualized by paintings after telling the dreams. Then the group sets up practical measurable goals to reach the united dream. When the goal is measurable then the group can measure how far they realized the dream. Think that the dream you want to reach makes you follow the lead.

Estimated road traffic death rate (per 100 000 population), 2006- 2007 is 31,6 in Rwanda (http://gamapserver.who.int/gho/interactive_charts/road_safety/road_traf-fic_deaths2/atlas.html) That is about 3500/year. In Sweden where we have worked with this for 60 years there is about 300 killed each year with about the same population.


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My Dream Road

“Imagination has more impact on living than major efforts to change” (Thomas Moore)

Start with your dreams and visions in order to create the Safe Road. Approach this from the children’s view and citizenship and you will be able to role as citizen you can create changes. This can be done with children’s paintings, role-plays, songs and writ-ings; from this a map will be created which can be used for learning and actions:“How can we create the Safe Road“? By answering this question, teachers, children and citizens can develop Traffic Safety, step by step.

As a teacher you are going to use and present students and other participants’ voices using audio and/or video recordings. The aim is that all participants are involved in creating and developing the answers and actions for the Safe Road.

Together with the children go out and investigate how one can realize the safe road. As a teacher you can support actions about the Safe Road integrated with the chil-dren’s talents and interests. When students create stories, games, make songs and art, sports, perform role plays and study the environment around the school, their awareness is growing. To describe the roads with geography, to calculate travelling routes and walks are examples of how to work with school children and traffic safety. Competitions about writing for the older children can also be used and they become role models to support traffic safety. Poems, lyrics, and lyrics to music are examples to present for school and community.

When the children play and engage in games, they can learn how to make positive changes while they learn. When children share their dreams and visions and create them in accordance to their talents and interest, learning grows. In actions you will support the children to be participants in their learning. The chil-dren’s examples are the ground for the continuation of goals.

“Children have the right to get and to share information, as long as the information is not damaging to them or to others.” (Declaration, Children’s rights, article 13)

“All children have the right to relax and play, and to join in a wide range of activi-ties.” (Article 31)

Create Safe Road DreamsThink that the dream you want to reach makes you follow the lead. 1. All students make their own personal dream.


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2. The group makes one united dream to work with. Dreams can be visualized by paintings after telling about the dreams. 3. The group sets up some practical measurable goals to reach the united dream around the school environment. When the goal is measurable, the group can see how far they realized their dream. 4. Act to create Safe Road around the school environment. Actions in authentic environments are easy to remember and motivate students when they act and solve real-world problems. 5. Bounce the Safe Road ideas to your community - Festival and Market6. How to make the Safe Road sustainable - Microfinance / Entrepreneurship

Create Safe Road - Bounce ideas and examplesWrite down your Community Goals and how you will measure them to see if you are making progress. This is how you will Create Change on the Annual Festival!

- Recognise and advocate children and students as effective agents of change in community development. - Bounce new ideas to others - make Sharing Awareness festivals and demonstra tions for Safe Road - Name Winners with Innovator Award, Inspire - Share Awareness Award. - Support new ideas so they will become sustainable small businesses through Mi crofinance.

Share the awareness; use the local radio station to bring change to your community. Present interviews, pictures, videos, the children’s examples about traffic safety on Rwanda teachers training blogMake it into an Annual Festival to remind everybody to contribute and share.


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Good examples will bounce and continue to grow. (Read more under action and later assignments from schools )

Create Safe Roads for Schools

Learning Goals for Teachers working with traffic safety actions:

• Understand children’s ability as pedestrians and passengers. Let the parents be involved in traffic education. • Traffic safety training after the child’s level and needs• Training in how to cross streets • Every student has a yellow jacket in order to be visible in traffic environments • Paint the road - make crosswalks• Stop the traffic• Get police and media involved • Collective walks and transports – young children keep a rope while walking

Through Education Finder’s homepage for Rwanda (http://rwanda.mkfc.se/) you will present your assignments and examples from the Community Festival (pictures, sto-ries, video clips, interviews, audio files etc). In this way discussion, information, and knowledge are open for everyone. Through these forums awareness through knowl-edge and experiences can be shared in school, home and community.


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Inspire change – make assignments:

School:-What do teachers and other students say about the Safe Road? -Who are responsible for safe environments? How can we cooperate? -Sing songs with the children and show safe places in the traffic! Yellow jackets/vests/ropes/paint ways or roads-Invite guests (police, experts and parents for example)

Methods for the teacher: Art Create and paint your dream village!

Music Sing songs about traffic safety under each week/month. Create songs with the themes about the traffic (light, sound, the way, how to be traffic friendly etc.)

Stop, look, listen and think! Those words shall be leading in the traffic environment always and especially with the children!

Drama By performing role-plays the children can create solutions about traffic safety.

Dance“Stop/look/listen/think/go”

To perform role-plays about situations in the traffic and solve cases (let the students create them and find the solutions) are methods to reach awareness about risks in al-cohol, attitudes and visibility. Technical innovations, information campaigns, movies, posters, radio and music can be possible ways to further enhance the work.

Writing competitions! The teenagers can write stories about the traffic and solutions. The winning story will be published!

Cooperation with traffic schools and police. Invite them to the school and train traffic safety together.

Create Safe Roads for CommunitiesObserve your community, visit your local traffic organisation or centre! What are the statistics on accidents in the traffic and causes in your schools’ community?


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- Is there an organisation monitoring the wellbeing of children, women and all in habitants in the traffic? Give information!- Can citizens leave their suggestions to authorities about traffic safety?- Innovate – be a Change Maker for good.- Learn about different traffic safety methods and how to use them!

With simple methods (for example jackets/vests, paintings on the ways with marks, collective walks with ropes, holding hands etc.) we can create safer traffic environ-ments.

Create a safe traffic environment: Assignments about traffic safety to be performed with the students:

AgesDealing with child pedestrian accidents, one will very easily notice the similarities of accident etiology in the various countries: the three groups “at risk” are the 5–9 year-olds, the 10–14 and aged persons and females because they are pedestrians. Children are always impulsive. Children before 15 years can’t act in traffic as adults and from 15 - 18 years. They can be in traffic but not as car drivers.

PedestriansPedestrians can be forced to walk along the roadway. With the limited street lighting, drivers often have difficulty seeing pedestrians.

Zero Drinking ToleranceDrinking and driving is one of main reasons for deaths in traffic. Actually the over-whelming majority comes home safely, without causing a fatal accident or being stopped by the police, but that does not change the fact that drunk driving is dangerous and should be taken seriously.

Visibility, methods, ”walking school bus”, yellow jackets, reflectors/light clothes and more:

- Traffic safety integrated in school subjects - Final project, presentation, follow-up, parents - Yellow jackets/Vests (to be visible and signal pedestrians)- Reflectors during evening and night- Police cooperation and directions (training day/days with school, home and community)- Painting/markings on the ways where to walk, stop, drive etc.


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Goals to work for:

• Develop training after the child’s level • Training in how to cross streets • Stop, look, listen and think! Those words are a support to sing or say in the traffic environment, especially with the children! Traffic: Health, Democracy, Equality, Community planning, Sustainable Development and Attitudes and Behaviours!

Traffic Safety Actions Assignments for Schools and Communities

Imagine: Good, Better, Best What do you wish would be good, better, best wellbeing?

Set some goals together on how you will reduce traffic accidents! How many students were involved last year in road accidents ? The goal next year ?

Step 1

Use reflective vests

Make vests with reflectors to be visible in the traffic. In the school the class can pro-duce and sell vests. With micro finances /entrepreneurship (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneurship) it can grow to a larger scale.


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Step 2

Paint the cross walks

Step 3 Use ropes to walk with younger children safer in the roads and streets. The students hold it while they walk with teachers. This creates a safer walk on roads with limited space. Children are impulsive and can’t keep the warnings in mind for a long time, but in these cases the rope helps to be safe.

Step 4Bounce the Safe Road ideasWhat have we learned in this section of people in our community? Everybody men-tion/write something they have learned. How and with whom should you share your new ideas? Decide that, too.

Step 5“Safe Road Day” in your community feast and market.To present ideas to others Demonstrate your Safe Road methods (ropes, paint ways, wests for visibility). Use Microcredit to make changes sustainableGive Awards with partners

Step 6Microfinance/entrepreneurshipMicrofinance is the provision of financial services to low-income clients or solidarity lending groups including consumers and the self-employed, who traditionally lack ac-cess to banking and related services.More broadly, it is a movement whose object is “a world in which as many poor and


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near-poor households as possible have permanent access to an appropriate range of high quality financial services, including not just credit but also savings, insurance, and fund transfers.”[1] Those who promote microfinance generally believe that such access will help poor people out of poverty.Microfinance is a broad category of services, which includes microcredit. Microcredit is a provision of credit services to poor clients. Although microcredit is one of the aspects of microfinance, conflation of the two terms is endemic in public discourse. Critics often attack microcredit while referring to it indiscriminately as either ‘micro-credit’ or ‘microfinance’. Due to the broad range of microfinance services, it is dif-ficult to assess impact, and very few studies have tried to assess its full impact. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfinance ) Six million of the ten million inhabitants in Rwanda live in poverty. People have no access to money. Only ten percent have bank account and in the countryside only three percent. Entrepreneurship in the curriculum is one way to tackle these problems.

HERE WE GO WALKING(Tune: Mulberry Bush)

Here we go walking holding handsHolding hands, holding handshere we go walking holding handswhenever we walk near a road.

WHEN WE’RE WALKING

Hold a grown up’s hand, hold a grown up’s hand, When we’re walking to the shops, Hold a grown up’s hand. Hold a grown up’s hand, hold a grown up’s hand, When we’re walking near the cars, Hold a grown up’s hand. Hold a grown up’s hand, hold a grown up’s hand, When we walk across the road, Hold a grown up’s hand. Hold a grown up’s hand, hold a grown up’s hand, When we walk across the road, Hold a grown up’s hand.

Songs to sing with the Children


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I’M A LITTLE SEATBELT

I’m a little seatbelt in the car,Before we go driving near or far,Time to slip your arms in, there you are,Buckle me up, now you’re a star.I’m a little seatbelt in the car,Before we go driving near or far,Time to slip your arms in, there you are,Buckle me up, now you’re a star.

ROAD SAFETY AND TRAFFIC LIGHTS

Red light, red light, what do you say? I say stop, and stop right away Yellow light, yellow light, what do you mean? I mean wait till the lights turn green Green light, green light, what do you say? I say cross, but please look each way Thank-you, thank-you: red, yellow, green now we know what the traffic lights mean. “Stop says the red light!” Stop says the red light Go says the green be careful says the yellow light Twinkling in between.

TRAFFIC SONG

Listen all you boys and girls this is my advice to you when you come to a corner Stop! And this is what you do - Stop! Look right; look left before you cross the road Stop! Look right, look left and right again stop! Look right; look left before you cross the road Stop! Look right, look left and right again.


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TWINKLE, TWINKLE LITTLE STAR Passenger Safety Song

Twinkle Twinkle little StarI wear my seatbelt in the carIf my Mum or Dad forget I remind them it’s not done up yetTwinkle Twinkle Little StarI wear my seatbelt in the carTwinkle Twinkle little StarI wear my seatbelt in the carOver my shoulder across my lapClick Clack Front ‘n’ BackTwinkle Twinkle little StarI wear my seatbelt in the car.

WE ARE SAFETune: “Mulberry Bush”

This is the way that we are safe.We are safe, we are safe,this is the way we are safe,every day of the year.

This is the way we cross the streetLook left, then right, left then right.Verse 1 againLook left then right for safety

this is the way we ride in a carSit up straight, buckle your belt.Verse 1Buckle your belt for safety.

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr2PUHiw8Ek

References and resources about traffic safety

Information about “Walking School Bus” in English:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_bus

Global Road Safetyhttp://www.globalroadsafety.org/index.shtml

Children and traffic safety methodshttp://www.kidsandtraffic.mq.edu.au/

Association for safe international road travelhttp://www.asirt.org/Home/tabid/147/Default.aspx

Traffic safety organizations in Ghana:

http://www.nrsc.gov.gh/

http://www.mrt.gov.gh/

Free material from European Union about traffic safety:http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/special-ist/knowledge/young/index.htm

Entrepreneurshiphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneurship

Microfinancehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfinance

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