The focus of our project was improving the road safety of the children with special need of the AMCIP institution. We identified problems regarding the school signalization that put these children in risk. We have created a proposal to improve the signalization to be sent to the City Municipal Hall, we created playful activities to educate these children on safe traffic dynamics and we made a awareness action in the street where this institution is located distributing 1500 leaflets. Also, we organized a lecture in our school regarding accidents prevention.
The ideas
AMCIP (Associação Mantenedora do Centro Integrado de Prevenção) was founded in 22/06/1994. Its creation was only possible because a group of mothers and professionals of the community saw the need of having a place to support the families and their children with special needs, who needed to be included and educated. AMCIP is an entity without profit and it is reference in attending disabled children from 0 to 6 years, enabling the development of their independence, socialization and educational inclusion. Nowadays it attends more than one hundred children at the center.
The street of AMCIP does not currently have any type of school signs.
It would be necessary:
- Board: Boarding and landing students’ area;
- Plaque: No parking and no stopping;
- Signage of floor: Slow School;
- And plaque: speed limit 30Km / h.
We decided our action would be working in favor of the school and its students, and firstly we needed to collect information about their needs and the problematic situations they face in terms of road safety.
We visited the institution in April 4th and we interviewed the principal of AMCIP, which was extremely important for the development of our proposals since it helped us to choose better the actions we were about to take.
The initiatives
The location we took the action at is between PUC-PR's Gate 2 and PUC-PR's external parking A. As we could see, there is no type of signage that demonstrates that there is a school in the place, or the exit of students. In addition, there are no signs where children's boarding and landing times are identified.
Related to the signage, we would like to build a recoil area in front of the institution and we took some measurements. Observing that from the wall of the school up to the street is 1.96 m and from the pole to the street 1.04 m (space where would be the retreat), we realized there wasn’t enough space to build the recoil area. Then, we draw a project of how the street would look with the correct signs for the school. We had the support of the Federal Deputy Christiane Yared to develop and document a proposal for signalization and she will send this request to the Curitiba Municipal Hall for a possible implementation.
We created playful and educational activity regarding road safety for the children of AMCIP which included educational songs, painting and collage. These activities and how they were conducted took into account each child's difficulties and allowed the children to develop their fine motor coordination. We also carried out some traffic dynamics, such as crossing the street using the pedestrian area.
We made folders and we printed 1,500. On May 9th , after our activities with children, we undertook an awareness action in the street where the institution is located and we distributed our leaflets to drivers and pedestrians at the exit of PUC-PR. At the same time, we used a banner, which was fixed in front of AMCIP, in front of the traffic lights.
Also, we organized a lecture for the Traffic Day, on “Yellow May”, on May 13rd, for the first and second grade students of Sesi CIC School and for the teachers. We counted again with the help of Mrs Christiane Yared, who was the lecturer, giving information on Accidents Prevention. The talk was intended to raise awareness among young people and teenagers about Traffic Laws and especially to show the seriousness of driving drunk. The Federal Deputy testified about the family's tragedy that occurred in 2009, where she ended up losing her son in a serious traffic accident. Since then, Christiane Yared, has created the IPTRAN (Peace in Transit Institute) that assists victims of accidents and families giving guidance and support needed for families' psychological and restructuring recovering.
