Doing road safety education differently
Casualties caused by road traffic accidents still place Romania at the top of the table, according to a recent survey carried by the European Union in 2019. Also, Romania is at the bottom of the table as regards the number of persons who can give first aid. Reason enough for the Association for Education Development and Youth involvement, EDIT, to create programs aimed at boosting awareness-raising attitudes among youngsters, and not only among them.
And that is how several initiatives have emerged, to that effect. To begin with, one such successful initiative is The Road Safety Class, which reached high-schools and secondary schools, under a rather off-the-beaten- track form.
EDIT president Liviu Zorila:
"There is also an interesting job that we do, and which is somehow tailored to suit today's needs: we always have a special guest on the premises in high-schools. The guest is oftentimes an influencer, or a star enjoying a lot of respect from them and who always turns up pro bono, in the support of what we do. As a rule, they're people with whom we've worked before, who know us, are aware of what we do, and support our activities through their presence on such occasions. And the people we had range from stand-up comedy artists to actors, anchor men, singers, vloggers and suchlike. We turn up, that's all right, yet for a child, we are somebody who comes over and does a course for them, the very moment we begin the discussion we start off by placing ourselves on an equal footing with the school or with the Education Ministry. But the very moment we show up and present those modules in a non-formal manner, with no classical teaching style but in a practice-centred style, including human interaction and questions, and answers, we do that in a pleasant way, and for the final part we bring a star they can only follow on Instagram and Facebook or only watch them on the telly, and the star shows up and, from her own experience, spins the yarn of all sorts of accidents they'd been through, all sorts of nasty moments she had in the traffic, by doing that, we think the impact we have is much greater."
Those ideas have been brought together in a program run along a couple of years, under the heading Safe Romania. EDIT president Liviu Zorilă once again.
"We have launched that national road safety program, Safe Romania. And it has two directions, road safety and first aid. If, for the road safety education direction, we've had a six-year-long experience, through this project, the Traffic Education Class, we so much wanted to do something about the first aid side. We've been doing that in high-schools, already, teaching this module, where we offer first-aid courses, the Emergency Situations Inspectorate trainers are young people, people who have a way with words, who take pedagogy courses themselves, I think, they surely know how keep the public on the boil and present those techniques. "
Also stemming from the urge to tackle training in a friendlier manner, the first-aid campaign was also carried with the help of stars.
Liviu Zorila:
"We started off from the idea that we need to do something about the first aid area as well, so showing up in one of the high-schools was Serban Pavlu himself, who is an acclaimed film, theatre and television actor, he too participated in the class and learned how to provide first aid and that very moment an idea crossed my mind, we'd seen such a campaign in England, carried just like that, featuring one of their popular actors, so I thought what it would be like if, in Romania, we did something similar. And that's how, from one clip we made, initially, we managed to make seven clips, and from one star alone we succeeded to have nine stars and, practically, "Playing Tig for Life", I think it is one of the very few online first-aid campaigns in our country, it is a campaign we carried together with the "Emergency Situations Department."
The outcome of all that?
Liviu Zorilă:
"The seven clips present separate methods of providing first aid, from hands-only CPR, the cardiac massage to the rhythm of a tune, "Stayin' Alive", after you've called 112, to what you should do if you get a broken arm, if you get cut, if you get burned, all sorts of such activities. The clips are short, one and a half, maybe two minutes long, they've been made with a lot of humour and a wee bit of education, but education is in disguise, somehow, behind the humour, because we know our beneficiaries. Romanians react to humour, first of all. So we have some funny clips, including very some very useful pieces of information you can learn something from, once you've watched them. So it takes you one and a half minute to laugh and, in the end, to get something out of it as well."
As for the members of the teaching staff, they also wanted to participate in such classes.
Liviu Zorilă:
"As a result of the campaign, we started providing activities physically. That is, sometime ago we went to a couple of high-schools in Bucharest to provide first-aid courses to the teaching staff, in the teachers' common room. And that was crucial, and teachers told us they needed something like that, as many times they had to cope with various such cases at school, when pupils got a burn, or a broken leg or arm, they got cut and the teachers didn't know what to do in such a case. And, as we ourselves were saying in this campaign of ours, Playing Tig for Life, it is of utmost importance to be able to intervene."
In the hopes we've created a much safer environment in all respects, to all those who want to be extremely well informed, we recommend the clips presented as part of the Playing Tig for Life campaign.
(Translation By Eugen Nasta)
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