Pertemps Education Network and Aviva boost Conies child safety campaign.
Birmingham-based road safety charity The Conies has teamed up with a leading recruitment group and an insurance giant to help take its safety campaign for children nationwide.
The Education Network, a subsidiary of Pertemps, is to support The Conies’ new nationally endorsed early learning programme for primary schools, which features a family of traffic cones that deliver safety messages through their adventures.
Aviva has also lent its support by offering tickets for a family of up to four to attend this year’s Aviva Premiership Rugby Final as the sensational prize in a special Conies competition.
The support follows the successful piloting last year of The Conies: Walking to School Safely Journal, from which more than 8,000 school pupils throughout Birmingham improved their safety awareness. The pilot was sponsored by the Birmingham Community Safety Partnership.
The 40-page workbook introduced The Conies as “child safety heroes” with the aim of serving a similar safety role to The Green Cross Code Man in the 1970s. Fundamentally Children, the UK-leading organisation that promotes the value of play in healthy childhoods, has been so impressed that it has awarded the journal the distinction of Endorsed status.
The Conies campaign has now been boosted by Pertemps and its subsidiary The Education Network with funding for the printing of another 25,000 copies of the journal and 1,000 copies of a support guide for teachers. The full set of schools to benefit will be announced in a special launch event to be held at the West Midlands Fire Service Headquarters on Tuesday, May 22.
Meanwhile Aviva sponsorship has enabled The Conies to run a prize draw for tickets for a family of up to four to attend the Aviva Premiership Rugby Final at Twickenham on Saturday, May 26. The package includes a pre-match rugby clinic for up to two children. The competition is open to all UK families with one or more children at primary school and details of how to enter are available on The Conies website at www.theconies.org.
The charity has also launched a new safety video, The Conies – Cone with the Wind, fifty years after the release of a public information film of the late Adam West’s Batman teaching the Green Cross Code to children on London’s streets. The long-lost film was screened in Birmingham on April 14th for the first time since 1967.
Fay Goodman, Director of The Conies, said: “We are delighted with the tremendous support and backing shown by Pertemps as we aim to extend The Conies into schools throughout the UK, and many thanks also go to Aviva for the competition prize to promote The Conies. By educating all our young children to be self-aware of potential dangers, we will contribute to their wellbeing and avoid situations that compromise their safety.”
Fundamentally Children has praised the Walking to School Safely Journal as “an excellent resource for the classroom as it teaches children to take responsibility for themselves when out and about, encourages children to follow instructions and promotes discussion”.