By Abhishek Marla And Shubhankar Mathur:
India being one of the fastest growing economies in the world with developing smart young talent that can improve the condition of the country is also a breeding ground for road accidents. Road safety has become an epidemic in the world being the world’s 4th largest issue that is impacting lives of people and causing millions to die every year. We figured the only way to stop such an epidemic is to become change agents of the issue and target the bottom line of the chain by educating the future leaders of tomorrow. By realizing the bootless efforts of trying to make adults realize the importance of traffic rules and regulations, PVR nest in collaboration with Michelin tyres along with VolunteerNow and Sakshi, decided to initiate the change in ways and target the ones who adults always listen to; their children, through a road safety campaign; a Cine Art parented road safety campaign called ‘steer to safety’. Believing that children are the best medium to spread and create mass awareness on following safety tips. We have chalked out an educational programme on road safety which will be conducted in the form of workshops in 100 schools spread all over Delhi and NCR. Our efforts have led us to partner with 20 organizations in this campaign including organizations such as Save Life Foundation, International Road Foundation, Delhi Traffic Police, Clean Air Asia etc.
On 24th September 2013, the campaign was launched. The event consisted of a musical depicting the importance of road safety and how one small mistake can affect a number of lives, the musical was directed by Smt. Smita Bharti, a renowned theatre activist, the show was prepared with great professionalism. The event was witnessed by students and teachers of 35 schools. Everyone in the theatre were humbled by the presence hon’ble Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Dr. Shashi Tharoor and his Excellency, Monsieur Francois Richier, the Ambassador of the French Embassy.
The show kicked off with premier of the campaign film with a musical followed after the premier and sent out a strong message and the plot with intense background music, and impeccable light and sound timing; to the audience’s eyes the show was a success. Guests expressed their appreciation and extended support towards the cause as both Dr. Tharoor and His Excellency addressed the crowd with their own speeches. A few brave citizens of New Delhi were acknowledged as well in the launch, as they shared their stories and mentioned the importance of being safe on the road for every second you spend on the road, and how lives can affected with just small lapse of concentrations and mistakes.
The following campaign is running for 9 months and we are already in the 5th month of our campaign where we have completed educating 100 schools about the workshop and have been sending volunteers to educate more and more schools every day. We regularly have been holding offline activities such as road rallies to take the cause of road safety forward and now we have launched a new application with the help of social cops called #steertosafety which you can find by logging on to www.socialcops.org/steertosafety to voice your road issues now.