Award-winning Samoan group urge other communities to pick up road safety programme
A West Auckland Samoan church group is urging other communities around New Zealand to pick up on its award-winning road safety initiative.
The initiative, called Ola Fa’asaoina, which means to save lives, was today [Thursday September 6th] named a winner at this year’s New Zealand Community Safety and Injury Prevention Awards.
The awards are supported by ACC, the Safe Communities Foundation New Zealand and the New Zealand Injury Prevention Strategy. They recognise, reward and promote best-practice community-based injury prevention and safety promotion in New Zealand. The winners of the four categories receive $2000 towards professional development and/or the development of their safety initiative.
And it all started with a parking ticket.
Ola Fa’asaoina began in July 2005 after church members at the Henderson and Ranui EFKAS Church congregations were repeatedly ticketed while attending services. They contacted fellow churchgoer, Constable Fagaesea Siaki of the Henderson Police, and Kitch Cuthbert of the Waitakere City Council, for help.
“Worshippers were getting tickets but they didn’t understand why and didn’t know what to do with them,” says Constable Siaki. “We worked together to develop solutions, which included the Council implementing parking restrictions to make parking more accessible to church members.”
The initiative was so successful that the two congregations decided to tackle other road safety issues, such as driving without a licence, when and how to use child car restraints and the often lethal combination of youth, alcohol, drugs and speed.
A lack of information and language barriers meant it was often difficult for the community to understand the relevant rules, says Constable Siaki.
The Church established a committee that included representatives of ACC, the NZ Police, Land Transport NZ, Plunket and the Waitakere City Council, which developed a module-based programme. Innovative initiatives included training bi-lingual driver licensing tutors and offering cheaper learn-to-drive courses.
Establishing a Car Seat Bank and running a ‘Belt-o-meter’ to encourage the use of safety belts were other key strategies. The church also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with ACC that allowed the corporation to work more closely with this community on road safety and injury prevention initiatives.
“We’ve had staggering results, with 116 church members achieving their learners licence, 42 have gone onto achieve their restricted licence and there’s been an increase in the use of car child restraints, from 74% to 96%.
“But perhaps the biggest win has been the greater road safety awareness and the creation of a general safety culture, not only on the roads but also within the home with a focus on issues like falls prevention and safety awareness models such as family violence.”
It’s also encouraging that Ola Fa’asaoina is now being rolled out in other Pacific churches in Waitakere and the North Shore, but the model could also be applied to any community, Constable Siaki says.
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