Re-living Road Safety Week 2022

Road Safety week ran from May 9th - 15th this year, and it was one for the books! There was heaps of young people running events in their schools, the SADD/ Kaitiaki o Ara staff got involved, and we had even had young people from SADD/ Kaitiaki o Ara winning awards. Check out some of the highlights below.

Let’s hear from Mia:

“This year's Road Safety Week theme was all about celebrating our Road Safety Heroes. For us at SADD/Kaitiaki o Ara, the rangatahi involved with our programme are our heroes. We had lots of stuff happening throughout the week. The staff team started the week with a yellow dress up on Monday. On our social media we displayed a collection of video snippets from our team and partners to shout out to our road safety heroes. Throughout the week we received lots of pictures and videos from our students hearing about what they were doing for RSW, and we finished off the week with the kahoot from Beca, which was a great test for our road safety knowledge.”

Let’s hear from Donna:

“On the 9th of May Sandra and I attended the Road Safety Week launch in Auckland. There were many partners and supporters of road safety in attendance. We helped celebrate all the amazing mahi our students do for road safety everyday, I am so proud of all the great activities our rangatahi/youth do to raise awareness about road safety, they are our road safety heroes. We got to celebrate their achievements with a number of our students being recognised for their contributions to road safety. During the launch Sterling Maxwell, our youth representative, was named as the recipient of the inaugural Road Safety Hero Award from the Yellow Ribbon Road Safety Alliance.   

Sterling has been involved in Students Against Dangerous Driving (SADD)/Kaitiaki o Ara since she was in year 9 at Gisborne Girls High School. She helped lead her peers in an environment where it was difficult to change the mindsets of those around her, persevered and led road safety initiatives in her school, and became a National Leader, contributing to many initiatives to help empower other young leaders run SADD at their schools. She has stepped up to become the first ever youth Representative on the SADD board of trustees. 

We're inspired by Sterling's passion for road safety and how she's gone above and beyond to help empower her peers and wider community to build a road safety culture. She's volunteered her time for the past seven years to raise awareness about the issues facing young people on our roads and to offer solutions to try to reduce the number of young people being killed or seriously injured on our roads.”

What a week! Once again thank you to all the awesome young people and community partners we get the privilege of working with. A special thanks to Albany Senior High, Campion College, Darfield High, Fiordland College, Kaikorai Valley College, Katikati College, Te Puke High, Waimate High, Wairarapa College, Stratford High for sending in photos of your activities!