To raise awareness about the risks of driving under the effects of alcohol consumption and the lives lost due to this risk behavior we created a poster, brochures and an educational video to reach young people and adults.
The ideas
We started our project by looking up information about vehicular accidents in Argentina, where we live. And we found a really alarming statistic: in 2016, a total of 7268 people died in these types of accidents! 20 people per day! The number of casualties was much higher that we initially expected. Also we found out that more than 600 minors lost their lives and that for half of the road crashes with deaths or injuries recorded in Argentina, alcohol is present in the victims' or drivers' blood. We also realized that we personally knew plenty of people who drive in a drunk state. Therefore we have chosen "Risk behaviors" as the topic of our project since they create dangerous situations in which people put their lives or those of others in danger. After researching, we determined that in our country a large number of young people, 3 per day, die due to driving after drinking. Accidents are the leading cause of death between 15 and 25 year old, and most occur on Sundays from 0 to 6 am. We concluded that if we combine alcohol and the steering wheel, we will be in constant danger. So we decided that we should take action and make a campaign to spread through our school community, so that next time the one who drives does not drink.
The initiatives
To raise awareness about this problem we developed different actions.
We figured out we could manage to do two different actions in order to reinforce our prevention campaign. One group of people was committed to work on a graphic design (posters and brochure) and the other set of students produced a multimedia presentation (a brief video).
We have created a logo which is a glass of wine with two little wheels underneath it. It represents the action of driving a vehicle after drinking alcohol. As a slogan, we have chosen the phrase: “AUTO + ALCOHOL = NO“, which in english is: “CAR + ALCOHOL = NO“. This means that we should never combine car and alcohol, as consequences can be very bad. We produced a poster and uploaded it on the school webpage and we created brochures with our logo to distribute to all high school students of our school with the message “Life is a party, take care of it”, so they could also share it with their friends and relatives. With this action our target public was the young people.
We made a short video to raise awareness about the dangers of driving while drunk. The video is targeted at both parents and teenagers that are beginning to drive. We emphasized on the dangers someone who drinks and drives poses to others. Specifically, we used the example of the many kids that are victims in these events, while being completely innocent.
After that, a social media campaign was necessary. We needed to take action on Youtube, Instagram, and Twitter. We also contacted other schools in the area so that they showed the video to their students to further spread the message.
Success for us was reached when we began showing the video to people and saw them react emotionally. We then knew that we had gotten the message across. We are also very glad to have received such an online response to the campaign and comments from people who found the video effective. Our colleagues and friends were surprised and interested in our campaign and we hope to continue spreading the message throughout the year.
The first school where we spread our video and graphic campaign was the Saint Francis school (http://www.saintfrancis.edu.ar/index.php/en/). We have given out the brochures and also stuck the posters along the school. Soon, the link of the video will be uploaded on the platform of our school in a few days.(http://www.dover.edu.ar/)
