This has been a very interesting joint endeavour with GiveWay Foundation. It’s founder, Suresh Kumar, is a man with amazing enthusiasm and energy, a man thoroughly committed to the cause of road safety. He has also energised a band of volunteers, both in the family and outside.
Together, we approached Resurrection High School – a school for underprivileged students in Indiranagar, Bangalore. The headmistress, Sister Nirmala, was not only supportive, she encouraged us to engage the students of Class IX and immediately allocated days and times for us. We created a program for sustained engagement on road safety over a span of 2 months.
We conducted these sessions in Kannada – the medium of instruction for the school.
The program included the following :
- A pre-test to baseline the understanding amongst the children.
- A “Hundi” program, asking the children to ensure that rules are followed by family members, including themselves!
- Students were given notebooks to capture all that they learn and discuss about Road Safety, and to make entries for the Hundi
- An awareness session on Road Safety
- A session on Hazard Mapping where students pick the risky and safe behaviour from pictures
- Six groups were formed, and they were assigned different topics on road safety.
- The children worked in the groups, gathered material, and presented the same to the whole class. A few teachers also participated in this.
- A post-test was conducted to check how the awareness about safety has increased. It is more than 50% improvement.
- Finally, we handed the certificates of participation and prizes to some students who did a stellar job
We also did a 1 hour session on Road Safety with the students of Std X.
This was a great personal learning for me, to use Kannada when doing my presentations. In the final session, I did a 6 minutes speech on road safety in Kannada! And it has been wonderful to join hands with such a committed person as Suresh.
Here are some pics.
