Rousing start for Road Safety School Tour 2012-2013

The first Young Street Smarts (YSS) Road Safety seminar/workshop for school year 2012-2013 was held last September 11, Tuesday at the Claret School of Quezon City. It should have been in San Beda High School in Alabang but then heavy “habagat” rains caused the inundation of many parts of the Metro when it was scheduled and was thus moved to another date.

Initiated and organized by Socio-Com Foundation for Asia (Socio-com) and Sunshine Television (STV), these teach-ins are conducted free for high school students and attending members of their faculty. The aim of the educational exercise is to make present and future safe and responsible road users out of these young students.

It was actually the second staging of the safety workshop in this exclusive all-boys school. The initial successful conduct of the seminar last school year prompted the school officials to commit a yearly hosting to benefit their students as elucidated by Mr. Joji Cuya, the school’s asst. principal during his welcome remarks.

A total of nine sections of 4th year students trooped to their auditorium to learn the meaning of traffic signs and road markings, rules of right of way, road courtesy, pedestrian and commuter safety and the dangers of drunk driving that fine afternoon.

There was a special guest/speaker that day in the person of Mr. Johnny Fetalvero, general manager of Honda Cars Kalookan, representing Honda Cars Kalookan Driving School, one of the sponsors of the workshop.

The YSS road safety team that conducted the seminar/workshop that day was lead by Mr. Arnel Doria, YSS road safety consultant and seminar director, Ms. Jenny Bleza, Socio-Com executive director and STV’s VP for production and Ms. Yvette Delos Santos of Honda Cars Kalookan with DJ Suzy of Magic 89.9 FM and Motoring Today’s “Youth Ambassador for Road Safety” emceeing the entire proceedings.

After the seminar, about 300 students from Claret School signed up to become members of the Young Street Smarts Club, an organization of young students who are 19 years old and below (upon application for membership), of good moral character and willing to spread the word about road safety among their fellow students, members of their family, relatives, neighbors and friends.

Accepted members shall each be given a member’s ID with a permanent number aside from members’ initial gifts upon their acceptance. Very soon there will be weekly electronic raffle of member’s numbers and valuable prizes shall be given away to lucky members whose numbers would be drawn.

There will also be plant tours of automobile manufacturer and field trips to traffic management “control rooms” (MMDA, MNTC, etc) for the YSS Club members to better understand the growing problem of traffic management.

If you want to be a member, you can either wait for the YSS Road Safety Seminar in your school where you can apply for membership or write to [email protected], “I want to be a member of the YSS Club”.

The 2012-2013 YSS Road Safety School Tour is presented by the Manila North Tollways Corp, in cooperation with the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) with the participation of Chevron, Asian Carmakers Corporation (BMW), Columbian Autocar Corporation (Kia), Cats Motors (Mercedes-Benz), PGA Cars (Audi), Car Covenant Company (Chevy), Mitsubishi Motors Philippines, Lexus-Manila and Toyota Motor Philippines as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

We are still awaiting the renewal of support from Petron and Air21 for the present school year.

SPMJ faces road safety problem “head-on”

The Society of Philippine Motoring Journalists (SPMJ) has been in the forefront of promoting road safety through education since it was founded more than a decade ago.

It started promoting its advocacy by conducting seminars among teachers on how to effectively teach their students road safety. It was a path that the group found so difficult to travel to achieve it’s goals and aspirations.

To begin with teachers are so difficult to get together considering their over-loaded schedules all throughout their teaching week.

Initially we thought Saturday would be an ideal day to conduct these teachers’ teach-ins, but then we found out that Saturday was the only day they have set aside for their family and personal needs and chores, which didn’t have the time of day all through the week when they are deep into teaching their students. And making them come to school an extra day is a drain on their pockets for transportation expenses alone. And this is especially true with public school teachers whose meager income barely makes both ends meet.

When SPMJ was venturing to do this with difficulty, parallel efforts were exerted by Socio-Com and STV as Plan B to target directly the students leading to the establishment of the YSS Road Safety School Tour, which fortunately produced better results.

Teaching teachers how to effectively teach their students become safe while on the road is indeed a good approach to promote road safety among the young per se, but may not be practical considering the times.

Faced with such harsh reality and futility SPMJ has decided to face the problem head-on, which is to teach road safety directly to the practicing drivers - public and private.

Can we still teach old dogs new tricks?

We know it’s going to be a tough trek, but our populace needs all the help it can get and SPMJ has vowed to help.

Would anybody want to help us on this?

Happy Motoring!!!

For comments: (email) [email protected].