JULY EDITION

What's new this month

Kia ora koutou. I hope you all had a great and safe July school holiday and are rearing to go for term 3! I can't believe we are already in the second half of the year. I completed my first lot of travel in term 2, which saw me in Northland and the Far North, doing a few workshops for keen students. My 10-year-old daughter has been getting into the spirit of road safety and helping with a few things from her perspective these holidays. Great to start them young I say!

In July we wrapped up some workshops all over the country. Due to covid, some SADD groups had dropped off but are now keen to re-ignite! We have also had some new SADD groups formed and are excited to work with these fantastic, creative rangatahi.

This month we were once again thankful to be part of the Police Pathway Programme (PPP) careers fair, held in Counties Manukau. We engaged with a lot of schools and students and are working on setting dates to run workshops with them.

The July school holidays saw our 2021/2022 National Leaders come together for a great conference in Christchurch.

We had a great bunch of applicants for the 2022/2023 cohort of new National & Regional leaders as well. They will have their first conference in the October school holidays and we can't wait!

Have a great term 3, spring is just around the corner!

Ngā mihi nui

— Sandra, Programme Delivery Lead - Upper North Island

This term we are working towards SAFER September, SADD/Kaitiaki o Ara's road safety awareness month. SAFER stands for Student Advocates For Everyone’s Road safety. September is the month we encourage young people involved with our programme to run events and activities that get their peers thinking and talking about local relevant road safety issues. There are many ways rangatahi can get involved, so check out our website for more information. We are looking forward to seeing what SADD groups get up to this September!

Rail Safety Week is Approaching

“Getting involved with the LEARNZ online road trip has been a great opportunity. It has been quite a rewarding experience, being able to produce something that can benefit other young people, as well as show off our not-so-amazing acting skills.

Our involvement in SADD was very beneficial to this project and was definitely valued by the LEARNZ team. They were interested in the types of things that SADD promote, and was keen to utilize our knowledge and skills. Together, we came up with the idea of a short, Tik Tok style video, that shows the connection between road safety and rail safety.

Putting the video together was great fun. We didn’t want the video to be too serious; we were aware of our target audience and wanted to make something that might get a few laughs, but will also get people thinking. The video we came up with showcases the do’s and don’ts when approaching a level crossing, and has the message that being ‘formal’ when approaching the crossing is beneficial to all people inside and outside the vehicle.”

— Jeremy Leverage, Yr 13 NL

The video will appear on SADD social media pages during Rail Safety Week, at @SADDNZ.

Check out the Kiwi Rail website for more information about rail safety week and how schools can get involved in promoting rail safety.

Yr 13 National Leadership Programme Event

In the first week of the July school holidays, we ran a 3-day workshop with our Yr 13 National Leaders. It was a jammed-packed event with lots of productive conversations and important mahi. You can hear more about what we got up to in the re-cap blog below.

“Extra Extra, Read All About It”
Wairarapa College Highlight

This month we had Elise Jung-Leask from Wairarapa College write up an amazing newsletter update which was sent out to the Wairarapa College community. This outlined some of the cool things her group have been doing to create awareness around road safety including a drive app campaign, yellow shirt day and The Wairarapa Youth Symposium.
Elise is doing some amazing mahi in her community and we are very excited to have her as a new 2022 National Leader. Nau mai haere mai and congratulations, Elise!

Police Pathways Career Fair

At the end of June, we had the opportunity to attend the Police Pathways Careers Fair as the only external provider. SADD/Kaitiaki o Ara and PPP have been partnering since 2020 to reinforce the road safety message. Students from various regions and different schools came along to enjoy a day filled with fun, learning about the different work groups within New Zealand Police and their career options. SADD showcased our student-led Road Safety programme. Students can run a road safety activity to pass one of their unit standards within their course. The students had the opportunity to experience the 'Focus or Fail activity' with the distraction of their phones. Most students came to realize that driving and texting at the same time is dangerous. Other students enjoyed a Kahoot with questions relating to police and road safety. It was great to see so many schools attending and benefiting from all the different experiences they had at each stall. We are proud to be part of this and we are looking forward to working more with the PPP in the future and making a change together.

Driving Change Network Conference

Earlier this month Vic had the opportunity to attend the Driving Change Network Conference in Wellington. It was a great opportunity to catch up with some partners and hear about developments and initiatives underway in the driver licensing space. The conference included some robust and passionate discussions about how we can improve access to driver licensing for all New Zealanders and reduce the barriers and inequalities that exist in the current system.

Road Safety Education Advisory Group

There are some amazing organisations in our communities dedicated to helping improve road safety. Many of those organisations first met in late 2021 to discuss their road safety education (RSE) current practice and how organisations can work together more effectively. Representatives came from SADD/Kaitiaki o Ara, Waka Kotahi (NZTA), New Zealand Police, Road Safety Education Ltd (RSE, RYDA programme) Fire and Emergency NZ and St John, SASTA (Safe and Sustainable Transport Association) and representative for Road Safety coordinators.

All the organisations have staff who visit schools for educational purposes, with road safety a common topic.

The purpose of this group is to work together to network, discuss current RSE activities being delivered to youth (13-19), and create opportunities to collaborate, design resources and deliver promising practice RSE to youth. This is a group that leads and takes action to support youth to build their knowledge and experience to become safe and confident road users and to reduce the number of people being killed or seriously injured on our roads.

Key objectives are:

- Organisations in the group are working together to support each other’s mahi to maximise learning outcomes for youth

- Youth have a clear pathway for accessing services and resources to help them learn about road safety to enable them to become safe and confident road users.

- Organisations are delivering promising practice RSE and are delivering consistent messaging to help achieve Road to Zero goals

Snapshot of some term 2 visits

In Term 2 our Delivery Team got on the road and visited a few regions and delivered some great workshops. We also saw a great range of activities happening all over the country! Here are some picture highlights from the term.

Sandra Dacey (Upper North Island) email or call 027 279 3130
Bobbi Hutchinson (Lower North Island) email or call 021 761 649
Lydia Newlands (Upper South Island) email or call 021 624 198
Mark Unwin (Lower South Island ) email or call 027 451 1253