Ag for Life Safety Day program

Times Reporter        

 

Awareness is important to teach to the youth so they know how to handle a hazard when one is encountered upon by a young child. The Ag for Life organization was on hand at Wheatland Elementary on June 24 to team up with Progressive Agriculture Safety to promote farming safety to educate students in Grades 4-6. The company could not emphasize  enough, not only to the students but to rural farming families the importance of how to prevent fatal accidents.  

Luree Williamson could not agree more to educate the kids at a young age about preventing themselves from getting seriously injured. The crucial message is “reiterating  safety messaging and how important it is for children to take a look, stop and access the situation and keep themselves safe,” said Williamson. 

The local organizations are what makes the programs run efficiently and make it an enjoyable experience for the children. 

“Including local businesses, paramedics, first responders, Agri services, it is very important for these organizations to be involved and safety is a top priority for them,” said Williamson. 

Gayle Sell, who is one of the event organizers, is really thrilled having these Agriculture awareness days for the youth. 

“This is a program that Progressive Agriculture has been doing for over 20 years and they have a real burden for farm and ranch safety,” said Sell. 

The fatality rate for youth across Canada is high as in the last 20 years there have been 2,000 injuries and 17 percent are children-related. 

“Our goal is to continue to keep the children safe, to decrease the injuries and fatalities across the country and 90 per cent of them are males so hopefully the gals will keep the males safe,” said Sell.  

On teaching the kids, Sell firmly believes that “with the children it is helping them at an early age like this to understand what it is like to be without an arm or a leg, a finger even so that the injuries that happen are not necessarily a knock on the head, which could cause an injury for life.”

Grade 5 Wheatland teacher Donna Carlson is extremely enthused about the having this event at their school, as it can be a essential educational tool outside of the classroom. 

“It is extremely well organized, a lot of planning has gone into this and the student are getting a ton of information,” said Carlson. 

“If they can take back five or 10 things and put it to their lives the next few months and stay safe during the summer it will be worth it.” 

Emma Van Bussel could not think of anything better to do on a sunny day and be out of the classroom, as she was ecstatic about being in the safety fair. 

“I did not know how important it was to be safe around some particular things like the sun as you can get cats eye from that,” said Van Bussel. Many students were having fun including Van Bussel. When asked about it being better then being in the classroom, “much better, heck yeah, it is awesome!” 

As for her favorite station, “we’re going to do one that is really good like you have to walk in a straight line with crazy vision and I am looking forward to that.”