Over the weekend I was invited as a guest speaker to the grand finale of the Safety and Security Week organised by LA GRÀCE School, Agiliti, Ketu. Throughout the week, the children had been taught on various aspects of Safety and Security. In fact, on one of the days they had gone on an outreach to sensitize their host community. Then, this grand finale had parents in attendance who were thrilled to safety and security knowledge through songs, recitations, drama and even a T.V. Show by the children.
If you are familiar with the demographic of Agiliti, you will be awed by what the School Management pulled off. Agiliti has a predominant amount of parents in the low income bracket. It was obvious this was the first time these parents were experiencing this sort of event. From their reaction, I could see a sense of pride in what their children presented and more importantly that they learned new things.
One of the presentations that tugged at my heart was the one from little kids in early primary classes. It showed the children carrying safety and security messages on cardboards. Some of the inscriptions were:
“Don’t touch me, I am a baby”
“Don’t give me sweet, you’re not my mummy”
“Do not walk alone”
“Do not open doors to strangers”
After the presentation by the two speakers, there was a panel discussion where the speakers and the School management had a chance to answer questions from the parents. It was a totally educating and entertaining event. I was so glad to be a part of it because it is things like this that can help our drive in ensuring more people especially children become safety conscious.
So, has your school had a Health and Safety Day or Health and Safety Week this year? With the rise in safety and security challenges across the country, it is now pertinent for more people to join the Safety Education and Awareness train. Schools and parents are important stakeholders in ensuring that safety and security consciousness is ingrained in our children.The advantages of doing this are:
- Raising safety conscious children
Using the example of LA GRÀCE School, when children are taught safety tips in simple and interesting formats, it makes the knowledge stick. It leads to future behaviour modification because that safety consciousness has been built into their psyche. - Raising safety conscious parents
Parents that are more enlightened will definitely begin to own this safety knowledge in their relationship with their children and interactions with the School. For instance, some of the things I mentioned in my presentation was for parents to be observant about the environmental and safety conditions of schools, the drivers and plate number of school buses, the security personnel and procedures at schools. When parents play their role by reporting unsafe conditions, it ultimately helps in ensuring the safety of children. - Developing safety conscious schools
We all know that bad news can destroy reputation of a business. If a school has a track record of safety incidents, they can lose future business. So, events like this makes schools to become more deliberate about putting safety systems in place and ensuring that children in their care have more knowledge that can be used in protecting themselves and others. This will ultimately reduce the amount of accidents and incidents that will occur. - A Safer Society
When we have schools across the society organising this sort of knowledge sharing events, it leads to a safer society. When more people become aware and safety conscious, it transcends to other aspects of life in the society. We would be reducing the amount of kidnap victims, we will be reducing the number of accidents at home and school, we will have more children who can act in different emergency situations and we will reduce loss of any kind.
Have you had a Health and Safety Day or Week in 2017? You still have a little time to put together something otherwise, it’s not too early to start planning towards that for 2018.
