Exhibition highlights child safety
Growing up–long considered to be a wonderful stage of life–can also be dangerous. Today, News 5’s Jacqueline Woods visited an educational exhibition that’s trying to teach our kids how to take some extra care.
Damira Noralez, Concerned about child abuse
“When people leave their children at home, sometimes the people go out and sometimes a rapist comes and knock at the door and sometimes the children don’t look who it is and they just open the door and so they get rape.”
Rasheed Reyes, Concerned about home safety
“Children are dying from burns, drowning in a buckets of water, shooting with a pellet gun, because it’s not safe for children.”
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
This week boys and girls are seriously discussing how safe they feel in the environments in which they live, learn and play. The awareness is part of activities taking place to promote World Health Week that is focusing on child safety. One way the children have been getting the information is through displays, educational talks and publications like Monica’s Gang. The comic book was published by the Pan American Health Organization to help children be more aware of the dangers around them.
Lila Ixcopal, 12 years old
“I’ve learn that we should take care of our children and keep the waters clean and also prevent…keep away the medicines and other chemicals that may harm our children.”
Shirlene Tablada, Coordinator, SHAPES
“It’s very child friendly, which is something that we promote highly. It’s a publication for children, basically in comic form that provides children with really good information about the different safety issues, about illness, accidents, injuries, abuse in the home, chemicals left laying about in the home in a simple way that children could read, that children could understand; and it’s fun.”
Shirlene Tablada is the coordinator for School Health and Physical Education Services, SHAPES. Tablada strongly believes that more needs to be done to protect children’s lives.
Shirlene Tablada
“There is a lot being done with regards to child rights and child protection, but there needs to be more stiffer enforcement of these penalties and there also needs to be more public awareness with regard to child safety.”
The concern prompted SHAPES to produce a weeklong educational display on child safety. The exhibit chronicles the tragic cases of children who have died or been injured in accidents that could have been prevented.
Shenine Valentine, Concerned about crime
“I would want the crime to stop and people stop pulling guns at you for no reason.”
Kourtney McKay, Concerned about road safety
“When I was coming from my house, a vehicle mi the come and I mi the go round the lane and I nearly got hit by the car.”
Jacqueline Woods
“And knocked off your bicycle.”
Kourtney McKay
“Yes ma’am.”
Eric Reynolds, Concerned about AIDS/HIV
“When children have AIDS they keep them down and it mek dehn can’t grow and…”
Jacqueline Woods
“So they are teased a lot in school?”
Eric Reynolds
“Yes, because once you mek everybody know that, they wah want tek advantage of you. But then, dah noh your fault.”
Shirlene Tablada
“What was really stunning to us was as we tried to collect stories and statistics of children that have been involved in some way in an accident or have been injured as a result of some kind of negligence, it really struck me as we went through the Amandala stories how many outstanding headlines there were, incidents of children who have shot themselves with shotguns that have been left laying around, children drowning in buckets of water, in neighbour’s septic tanks, children being knocked off the bicycles on highways. It really made you realise this is a really, really serious situation in our country and that our children are really not being protected enough.”
Students, teachers and parents are particularly encouraged to see the display at the Leo Bradley Library and to come up with their own ideas as to what can be done to help protect our children. Jacqueline Woods for News 5.
The child safety educational display will run through April fourteenth. Meanwhile, the public is being invited to participate in the bike and run activity that takes place this Saturday. It begins at 6:00 a.m. at the Yabra Green and concludes at Memorial Park.
