FENZ workshop recap

At SADD/Kaitiaki o Ara we love to collaborate, and we work with community partners in the road safety space from all parts of the country. One of our partners Fire and Emergency NZ (FENZ), have been working with SADD in a number of ways over the years and the most recent project was with the Wellington team around a road safety workshop FENZ has developed for young people. 

FENZ teamed up with two of the local school SADD groups to run through the workshop and get some feedback on how their workshop was received. We caught up with the organisers and students to find out more about what it is and how it went. 

Hi Mirren, can you tell us a little bit about the workshop?

This workshop was organised in partnership with SADD so that we at FENZ Wellington Community Readiness and Recovery team could have a chance to work closely with some of the SADD student leaders in our district. Our Community Readiness and Recovery team is currently delivering driver safety information out in the community and we wanted to ask SADD students what they thought of the programme and hear what we could do to improve it for rangatahi. We are grateful for the opportunity to work closely with SADD in this space as we are all striving toward reducing driver-related incidents on our roads!

Paul, how did the workshop come about? 

Approximately 10 years previously Fire and Emergency in Wellington were asked to collaborate on a Road Safety Programme to support local Wellington Councils with their road safety campaigns. Our initial programme was based on a crash car that was involved in a fatal car crash in 2009 on the Paekakariki Hill Road. It was called the Last Choice Car and featured the actual crash car along with a focus on the shock-awe factor. 

I became involved with the programme about 7 years ago and a lot of the feedback I received from teachers and educators was that shock and awe presentations were not as effective in changing young people’s behaviour. The purpose of all programmes is to educate and change behaviour. Taking this on board I looked around and contacted the Queensland Emergency Services who were using a programme called RAAP, Road Attitudes Action Planning. They gave us permission to use all/any parts of their programme. 

With this in mind, we redesigned our programme using a lot of their material. This incorporated more interaction, more learning and better strategies for keeping people safe. Also going over how to apply positive pressure to change behaviours and being a good role model to friends and families, with some role play being used. 

The crash car is still used but more in a general talk capacity, about the events leading up to the crash and the outcomes for the passengers. We focus on the choices that were made in that car. Students are asked initially to tell us what they think has occurred when they first view the car. 

The feedback we receive from our community partners who participate in this programme is very good. Mirren and I are proud of where we are at the moment. 

What’s the plan from here post-workshop?

Community partnerships now are based on delivering a programme that is the best fit and does deliver the right outcome. We are both focused on this and really grateful to work with the expertise of SADD and SADD student leaders.

Mirren and I would like students in our region to know that we are here to support their great efforts in teaching road safety to students. Both of us admire their commitment and we are very willing to support them in any way we can.

We are flexible and happy to tweak our programme for any groups we work with.  We want to deliver something that is relevant and gives community groups a programme that they are happy with and which will create knowledge, safe behaviour and better outcomes for road users.

We look forward to working with you further!

He Waka Eke Noa.

Thanks Mirren and Paul, great to be a part of something impacting with positive change, to help young people in our community. Next up, we also got a chance to follow up with some of the students that went along to the workshop, and here’s what they had to say:

Q1 (Tara) - What were your initial thoughts when you signed up for the focus group for the FENZ workshop?

My initial thoughts of joining the SADD focus group were around the idea of having an opportunity to actually get involved with  SADD. Having been in contact for a while with SADD, it was great to have the chance to actually attend a workshop with SADD and FENZ. I was very excited but predominantly curious to see how it would be run. There was an obvious linkage between the values and mission of SADD and those of FENZ, but I was very interested to see how the workshop would go about demonstrating this. Because we had been informed that we were investigating a car crash, I had a rough idea of what the workshop would entail, but otherwise was unsure of what it might involve and what I might learn.

Q2 (Rosa) - What are your thoughts overall about the workshop?
Overall, I thought the workshop was really well done. I found that the mix of both physical activities (the dice exercise, positive pressure scenario plays, and seeing Richie’s car), and theoretical information (slideshow, whiteboard) helped me to learn a lot, while also keeping the workshop interesting. I really liked that the presentation was interactive for us as the audience. For example, when we were asked what we thought the 5 causes of serious/fatal crashes could be, we had to process it and share our ideas, rather than just sitting and listening to what the answers were - which in turn has helped me retain the information from the workshop. I think that it would be really positive to keep the audience interaction as part of the workshop in the future!

Q3 (Seb and Izzi) - What are the two top things you learned from the workshop?

Seb - I think the biggest thing I learnt from the workshop is just how quickly and easily things can go wrong if you’re not careful. We learnt about the story of a very unfortunate driver who was only trying to have a fun night with his friends, and who eventually ended up in a fatal car crash. Just having some fun with some drinks and some loud music may be cool, but certainly not when driving. Our group got to see the car that was involved in said fatal crash, and it really brought us into the reality of how dangerous driving can be, in combination with what might seem like simple fun. We learnt the importance of being a safe driver, by being shown the consequences of not being a safe driver.

Izzi - The biggest thing I learnt from this workshop was the importance of positive pressure. It had never occurred to me to use positive instead of negative pressure, and this was a really awesome skill to learn. We were taught the most effective ways to diffuse a dangerous situation and how to not offend the driver while staying safe. This was great to learn and we will be able to use and share this skill with our peers in order to keep more people safe. These two learnings will be invaluable to our future experiences and in staying safe and preventing crashes from happening.

Q4 (Armin) - What was the most exciting part of the workshop?

I wouldn't say that it was exciting but seeing the car that was involved in the fatal accident was certainly the most eye-opening part of the workshop. You hear on the news every day that there have been some amount of fatal accidents somewhere throughout New Zealand and after a while, you just begin to tune them out. However, seeing the wrecked car and the amount of damage put an image to all the stories and put everything in context; it really showed just how terrible all these accidents are and it will definitely stick with me for a while. Knowing that someone died in that car and just seeing how there was no driver's seat left was eerie.

Another eye-opening part of the workshop was hearing about all the accidents that Mirren and Paul went to in their careers of being firefighters. Hearing how Paul remembered exact dates and details of crashes that happened over a decade ago was heartbreaking as I could tell that they had an effect on him. This increased my respect and admiration for the men and women that work in the emergency services tenfold, at the same time making me never want to work in this field as I don't think I'd be able to handle it.

Thanks to all involved in this workshop, it’s great to have an insight into the work FENZ is doing in the education space. We look forward to seeing the workshop continuing to impact rangatahi!