Safety Smarts celebrates 20th anniversary

By Sharon McLeay Times Contributor

Providing information on farm safety to students is “Safety Smarts” prime objective.
Through seven distinct Safety Smarts presentations, rural children from kindergarten through Grade 6 are taught to recognize and react safely to a wide variety of potential farm hazards. Age appropriate, hands-on, interactive farm safety messages are taught to individual classes of rural students, with each grade’s presentation having a unique focus.
Safety Smarts presentations are offered to all schools in rural Alberta at no cost.
“The 2017-18 school year is the 20th consecutive year of Safety Smarts delivery to rural and remote elementary schools across our province,” said Laura Nelson, executive director of the Farm Safety Centre, a non-profit that promotes safe agricultural practices through the development and delivery of educational materials throughout rural Alberta.
Last year the program taught 2,644 students in 19 Wheatland County schools. Facilitators of the program present activities and take-home materials about ways to avoid dangers presented by living in a farm environment.
This year, the Farm Safety Centre developed a new “Horse Sense” component to Safety Smarts, aimed at Grade 4 students.
According to the Canadian Agricultural Injury Reporting (CAIR), there are about 13 child deaths in Canada per year from farm-related incidents, and sources in the Canadian Medical Journal place farming as the third most dangerous industry in Canada.
To address those dangers, the Alberta government’s farm safety advisory council places farm safety education programs on their priority focus list, indicating raised awareness can effectively reduce injuries and fatalities.
The Farm Safety Centre wants to be a proactive participant in that effort; however, it requires funding to provide this service to the schools. Wheatland County has supported the program in the past and they were recently asked for an increase based on a funding formula of $3.50 per student, which works out to $9,254 for 2018. Wheatland County’s agricultural service board recommended granting them $4,000 in funding for 2018, with a raise to $5,000 for 2019.