From left to right is Bonnie Lysyk Vice President (Ontario) of Insurance Bureau of Canada, Colleen Point (advisor), Jessica Wallis, Jennifer Rowe, Courtney Serran, Meagan McCann, Kerri Renaud (Advisor) and the Minister of Transportation Jim Bradley.
From left to right is Bonnie Lysyk Vice President (Ontario) of Insurance Bureau of Canada, Colleen Point (advisor), Jessica Wallis, Jennifer Rowe, Courtney Serran, Meagan McCann, Kerri Renaud (Advisor) and the Minister of Transportation Jim Bradley.
Chippewa SmartRisk crew News Release
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The Chippewa SmartRisk crew participated in the Ministry of Transportation's "Buckle up Ontario the 95% Challenge" and our team won one of four $1000 prizes.
The categories were Media, Innovation, Partnership and Best Overall. We took home the prize for Partnership. Several members travelled to Toronto to accept our award where we were on Breakfast television as well as Global demonstrating how the Quick Click game is run.
The 95% Challenge is an effort to increase seatbelt use and save lives. Wearing a seatbelt is the single most effective thing you can do to protect yourself in a collision. Ontario currently has a seatbelt compliance rate of 92.1% (the national average is only 90.5%). But we need to do better because for every 1% increase in the compliance rate five lives are saved in Ontario every year.
The goal of the 95% Seatbelt Challenge is to increase Ontario's seatbelt usage rate to 95% or better.
Chippewa's SmartRisk team ran several events in order to submit for the challenge. We ran a school wide "Quick Click Challenge" where teams of 5 sit in a vehicle and are timed on how quickly they can rotate from seat to seat and buckling up in each one along the way until they return to their original seat. We had 13 teams participate including two teacher teams (the Dashboard Divas and the Muffler Men), loads of fun was had by all, including the spectators. Subaru, Kia and Honda were kind enough to donate cars for the challenge.
Our winning team, The Supreme Dream Team then travelled to the Waterfront where they clicked off against Scollard Hall's winning team. Raiders were victorious and won great cash prizes as well as helmets and MP3 players. Our community partners of Pat Cliche (Connecting Community Partners for Injury Prevention), Jeff Griffith (MTO), Janet Humble (Health Promoter, NBPSDHU) and Fran Laframboise (Public Health Nurse) as well as the North Bay City Police were instrumental in supporting our efforts.
Our SmartRisk team also developed and circulated buckle up bookmarks to the parents of our grade 8's as well as designed various placemats that included info and games to increase seatbelt awareness and dispel myths about seatbelt use. They were used at our annual pancake breakfast.
We hope to use the $1000 to continue to promote Smartrisk in our school as well as expand the "Quick Click" Challenge next year. We would like to see more schools on board and perhaps some community groups as well.
Our SmartRisk team works to promote 5 key messages: Buckle up, Look First, Wear the Gear, Get Trained and Drive Sober. We have put on "Mocktail’s” and Heroes presentations and many other events to continue to help our youth make smart choices while having fun.
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