Tips for Starting a Group
Youth Think and Drive is a peer-to-peer road safety program.
Steps to Start your School's Group
- Form a Committee in your School
- Plan out your Project
- Get Media Attention
- Evaluate your Progress
Step 1: Forming a Committee in your School
For your committee, you should have the following people involved:
Youth Leaders
- These people plan, organize, and run activities in your school
- Decide who the group's leader will be
- Decide how each person in the group will participate
Staff Advisor
- This person will assist in recruiting interested students (if one does not currently exist)
- They can provide encouragement, assistance and guidance for the group in planning and implementing activities
- They act as a go-between with other staff on behalf of youth group
School Health Nurse
- Each school is assigned a school health nurse
- They can help you keep events on-time and get required resources from Niagara Region (ie. displays, posters, promotional items)
More tips on how to organize and run a committee.
Step 2: Planning out your Project
Your school's project can be just about anything you want it to be.
Use your creativity to come up with project ideas that haven't been seen before.
First, choose the road safety risk factor(s) of your choice. Then, think about ideas to get the message out to your school.
You are encouraged to come up with unique ideas, but some project ideas include:
- Video/Poster Contest
- Challenge your school to come up with videos or posters raising awareness about at least one of the five road safety risk factor for young drivers
- Set a deadline to have entries submitted
- Showcase the entries at a road safety event
- Print copies of posters and post them around your school
- Attend Existing Events at your School
- Make your group's presence known around your school
- Set up displays to let people know about the road safety risk factors that exist for young drivers
- Order Think and Drive promotional items (flyers, posters, games and prizes) to hand out at your event
- Video Testimonials from Students
- Your peers may have personal stories from a past car crash that they would like to share with others
- These stories could help influence others at your school and community
- Texting Challenge
- Show the dangers of texting while driving with this activity
- Set up pylons in a race course pattern
- Collect some scooters or wheelchairs, and safety equipment
- Ask your peers to go from one end to the other while texting, without crashing or veering off course
Step 3: Getting Media Attention
Having television stations and newspapers cover your events will help get your message out and also get more students to come to your event.
Follow these guidelines to involve the media to make sure your event gets good media coverage.
Step 4: Evaluating your Progress
At the end of your project, you'll want to see if it has had an impact on the behaviours, attitudes, and knowledge of your friends.
By handing out a survey at the beginning and the end of your program you'll be able to track the success of your program.
Get in touch with your School Health Nurse to learn about the steps involved in this process.
