Our project consists of many small initiatives which we have created to generate an improvement to road safety in our community.
Tes Idées
We are 3rd year students of Instituto Ballester High School in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The whole group is comprised by 86 pupils, divided in four classes.
After learning about this initiative, we decided to get involved in the topic. We talked about road safety and studied the different areas of its implication. Next step, we decided to generate a big project with the aim of improving road safety in our community. To organize the activity we divided our investigation into three main areas: 1) the neighborhood 2) school surroundings 3) inside the school. According to individual interests, we created nine small study groups. Each one of these groups continued with the investigation, this time orientated to a specific topic within one of the main areas of study.
Tes initiatives
We obtained nine projects which could be described as follows:
1) The neighborhood
- We made posters to make drivers conscious of the consequences of driving under the effects of alcohol.
- We sent a letter to the newspaper to get published. The letter had the purpose of making the readers aware of risky behaviours on the street.
- We made a video called “Draw My Life” to post on the social networks Facebook, Instagram, and others. The video is about how to be careful when you are driving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC9ku4_2iEs - We made a video to show situations where people behave dangerously, without following the rules. We posted the video on our social networks and on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/gD6ltSTr1FY - We wrote a letter to the president asking for laws to support the implementation of electric cars in Argentina.
2) School surroundings
- The use of cell phones when crossing the street: This project was making posters to stick up at corners. These posters contained a STOP signal to catch people's attention and make them stop using their cell phones.
- Promotion of a “Corredor Escolar”: The “Corredor Escolar” consists of some streets around the school where parents and a police officer look after the children before school starts and after school finishes. We made some posters to increase parents’ participation in the initiative.
3) Inside the school
- We made a trivia game “Road Safety Issues” and we invited students to play it during school breaks.
- We gave a talk to elementary school students about traffic signals. After that, to put concepts into practice, we made a tour of the school yard with bicycles and traffic signals.
- We searched the information on the Your Ideas Your Initiatives web page and prepared informative brochures, a quiz, and a PowerPoint presentation to work together in class with first grade students and make them understand the importance of being a responsible citizen when walking on the street.
Participating in this project was useful in getting us to learn about road safety, but the most important thing we learned was that the sum of small actions can make big changes.
