Recognizing that accidents are one of the biggest killers of children in India is paramount if we need to prevent in children, the thousands of hospital admissions, hundreds of deaths and disabilities every week. Most of these injuries can be avoided and deaths prevented and understanding that fact is important if we need to provide a safe environment to nurture our children before they are scarred for ever. The goals of this mission are to ensure safer and healthier environment for our children and to enable them to lead more active lives. The plan of action includes increasing awareness among caregivers, providing safety measures and instructions for quick remedial action.
MAGNITUDE OF THE PROBLEM
Based on 1 year data from the Bengaluru Injury Surveillance Programme, 5509 children were admitted with injuries among whom 209 died. There was one death for every 27 non-fatal injuries. Male deaths were thrice as common when compared to females. Majority of the children belonged to average socioeconomic groups and were studying in schools. Worldwide, accidents kill more than 2000 children per day and 75-90% of these accidents could have been avoided through better awareness and prevention.
Safe Children Mission-
“BE THE CHANGE, BE THE DIFFERENCE”
GOALS
-
Awareness
-
Advocacy
-
Systematic changes
TARGET GROUPS
-
Parents, carers, child or young person – to learn more about safety and preventing accidents in the family
-
People who work with parents, carers, child or young persons to provideinspiration and resourcesto raise awareness of child accident prevention and run local activities and events.
STRATEGIES
Increasing Awareness
i. Personal awareness
Examples include, enrolling doctors, health care workers and friends in awareness campaigns on a one to one basis and coordinating with health care providers across intensive care departments in a city or providing a child safety information booklet to everyone getting admitted into a hospital.
ii. Group awareness
Conducting talks/ awareness programs to groups of individuals who deal with children on a regular basis. These groups include school personnel including teachers, caretakers, school bus drivers, staff at playschools and daycare centers, families with young children, mothers, women welfare associations, women centric industries, companies with a young workforce [IT,BPO], pediatricians and pediatric nurses.
iii. Public awareness
They include running mass media campaigns on the radio, TV, newspaper in the form of interviews of experts, running ads/crawlers, printed newspaper adverts or running a full program on TV channels that target children. Tie ups with schools, traffic police, fire brigade, hospitals, local IAPs, NGOs to recognize child safety week, conduct debates, painting-slogan competition, flash mob dances, skits may be attempted. Citizen photojournalists can send photos where breach of child safety norms has taken place.
Advocacy
a. Enroll child support groups to generate debate and promote and advocate child safety measures across homes, play areas, schools, transport modes, Amusement parks.
b. Enrol government to formulate child safe guidelines/laws
c. Accreditation for safety norms
d. Tie up with furniture-home décor companies & hardware companies
We would like to start an awareness campaign at least on small scale, beginning in Bengaluru city, initiating the program among healthcare providers who can educate others as well, then moving on to parents and teachers
We aim to provide practical safety advice by providing free resources to community-based staff and organizations that act as a catalyst for local safety activities and events, which reach thousands of children and families all across Bangalore. By June of this year we should be having a website of our own dedicated to children’s safety measures and awareness that would not only provide information similar to safekidsbangalore.org but also play a role in encouraging the public at large to play an active role in nurturing this mission, publicizing the activities of people/NGOs involved in such efforts, supporting causes that promote child safety measures, seeking government and private support in such endeavours to make the world indeed a safer place for our children.
By Nov 2019, We would like to bring to the fore the theme for this year’s Children's day as Child Safety Awareness and Prevention year
Children need to have a safe environment. They are too young to take care of their own safety. They cannot understand danger. Telling them and teaching them about danger is important, but it does not keep them safe. Keeping young children safe is an adult’s responsibility. Most injuries to young children happen at home, so it is very important to make your home as safe as possible. Our message is that even small changes in our everyday lives can make big differences to children’s safety. We’ll be asking families what changes they can make that will make the biggest difference to children and young people’s safety. Parents generally have a sixth sense-our attempt is to fine tune that sense. We hope that within 5 years all parents should be tuned to the concept of child safety and demand likewise services in all aspects of their lives be it child safe malls, child safe parks, transportation, schools, amusement parks etc. we want a create a generation of aware citizens regarding child safety that would multiply in the years to come. We must remember that child safety is not our choice, it is our responsibility.
www.asterbangalore.com/playful/
Register as a school member
School Membership of NexSchools comes loaded with many free benefits, insights and 
ideas