Peggy Revell
District programs promoting injury prevention and safety among youths found an international stage earlier this month at three conferences in Vancouver.
Jia Wu, a Grade 12 student at Fort Frances High School, and local P.A.R.T.Y. program co-ordinator John Beaton, who also oversees the Medical First Responders program there, had the chance to head west and present at the Prevent Alcohol Related Trauma in Youth conference, Safe Communities conference, and the Canadian Injury Prevention Conference, which ran Nov. 16-19.
“I thought it was an amazing experience to get to go to see how things kind of worked in the real world outside of school,” noted Wu, who is part of the Medical First Responders at Fort High.
“I’m really glad I was given this opportunity and I learned quite a bit from it.”
For Wu, the highlight of the Safe Communities conference was its keynote speaker, Dr. Louis Francescutti, president of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Canada.
“The message that he basically gave was that injury is a disease,” Wu said. “There are no accidents. Everything can be prevented,” he stressed. “99 percent of things can be prevented.”
The focus of the conferences were on educating and empowering youth about injury prevention, Wu noted.
“If you can get the message across at an early stage, then basically it becomes part of your mindset, it becomes part of your mentality,” he reasoned.
“They stress that you can take risks, but you take smart risks as opposed to unsmart risks.”
Wu and Beaton made three different presentation on youth-based projects which run in the district, such as the First Responders program at Fort High, the local work done by P.A.R.T.Y., and more.
What made their presentations unique compared to others, though, is the district’s focus on having youth talk to youth, and delivering the program and message about safety, Wu said.
“So in that way our presentation was novel,” he remarked, noting he probably was one of the youngest participants in the conference.
“I think we’ve seen that there’s a lot of really unique things that we do in this community, with empowering our youth,” said Beaton.
“My focus has always been on getting the youth to run things, to give messages out,” he stressed.
For example, Wu and Beaton presented on SIDNE—the distracted driving go-kart program—which was brought on board here last year.
“[SIDNE] was youth delivering the message to other youth that distracted driving is not okay; that distracted driving can cause irreparable damages later on in your life,” Wu explained.
“Because it makes more sense coming from somebody you know—coming from another youth perspective,” he reiterated.
“As opposed to somebody in authority telling you, ‘No, you can’t do this. No, you shouldn’t do this.’
“Because if it’s coming from a friend, you’re more likely to listen to it,” reasoned Wu.
Another one of the things shown in Vancouver was the video made about the mock crash outside the high school back in 2008.
“The video, that was the first time it got national attention,” noted Beaton. “People were really impressed with it; they thought it was real. And there again, we used youth that were involved with that, as well.”
There was a lot to be learned at the conference, added Beaton, which they brought home with them and will be sharing with teachers and others.
“It was interesting the different links we made because the P.A.R.T.Y. program is all over the world,” he remarked.
One of these connections was with P.A.R.T.Y. programs in Australia, with whom Beaton said they’re now looking at how to develop one that will reach out to aboriginal communities.
Wu was sponsored to attend the conferences by Ainsworth Engineered Barwick while Beaton was sponsored to attend by Safe Communities Canada.
