Alert Now, Alive Later

How many students heard the message?
1200

Estimated percentage of your student body?
91-100%

Who has your project aimed to reach?

  • Freshman class
  • Sophomore class
  • Junior class
  • Senior class
  • School professionals
  • Parents
  • Community at large

Objective:
The objective of our project this year was to bring awareness to the dangers of distracted driving and how to be safe while in the car, whether you are a passenger or a driver.

Target Audience:
Our target audience is mainly new drivers; however, we also reached out to adults who drive and young children who are passengers. We targeted everyone in Robbinsville, NJ.

Execution:
The theme of our campaign was “Alert Now, Alive Later.” We began by handing out lollipops for Valentine’s day to the junior and senior class. Each lollipop had a message relating to driving safely attached, such as, “Be alert today, so you can be mine tomorrow!”. We spoke to the local PD department and school officials about installing a sign near a dangerous intersection close to our school and in our student parking lot. The idea behind both of these signs was to alert the driver that they needed to take extra precautions in these areas. We also got approval to provide coffee coupons (since caffeine tied to our “alert” concept) to students who shared safe driving tips and photos on social media. We were waiting to meet with the cafeteria staff to discuss this further when school was closed due to COVID-19/

We shifted our campaign to be virtual, which began with an online Safe Driving Spirit Week from May 4 – 8. During the week students, staff, and community members were asked to post pictures related to safe driving on social media. Additionally, we asked people of all ages to answer questions relating to habits of safe drivers via FlipGrid. Once we received all the responses we made a PSA that we emailed to students, staff, and parents. After Safe Driving Spirit Week we focused our attention on the senior class so that we could give them a few final reminders to continue to be safe drivers once they left Robbinsville. We purchased flashlight keychains to put into the senior swag bags so that they could attached it to their car keys and have a way of alerting others that they were present or if they needed help. Finally, we created a Safe Driving Scholarship that we will be awarding to a senior that we feel best describes the significance of “alert now, alive later” as it applies to safe driving. Applicants can write an essay or poem, or create a video or photo, to apply by May 29th. We will work as a team to choose the winner of the scholarship.

Teamwork:
You can see images of our team working together to prepare the lollipops for the first event we did. It took all-hands-on-deck to attach messages related to safe driving to all of those lollipops! When our school, and consequently our campaign, went remote we all continued to help implement our project by posting our Safe Driving Spirit Week information on our own social media pages. We also participated in each activity of the Safe Driving Spirit Week to increase visibility of the event, as well as educate the students, parents, and community members in the district about safe driving.

Use of Resources:
Before we had to move our project online, we had reached out to the non-profit group, Campfire NJ to partner with for our drive-in idea. We had also reached out to the Robbinsville Police Department, Robbinsville High School food service, and Rider’s Bronc Radio station. We had planned to also reach out to Starbucks and the “What’s My Name” foundation.

Use of Media:
There was an article published on communitynew.org that talk about our slogan, as well as all information about our campaign (link to the article: https://communitynews.org/2020/04/30/robbinsville-class-of-2021-to-host-safe-driving-spirit-week/). We also posted on our Instagram page @rville_ugotbrains and our Twitter @Rville2021 about our campaign (and intend to post about safe driving at least once a month to remind students about their safety) along with our Instagram story. We emailed NJ Times, the Trentonian, and NJ 101.5 about our campaign, but did not receive any response from them.

Thoroughness:
Our project demonstrates an understanding of teen driving safety because we included strategies of how to be a safe driver in each day of our Safe Driving Spirit Week (keep your eyes on the road, be a designated texter, keep music volume low, and stay alert behind the wheel). We also made sure to give examples of what not to do while driving through the use of our FlipGrid/PSA videos.

Impact:
While we only received a total of 16 video responses on our Flipgrid, we can see that the videos were viewed a total of 399 times (as of writing this), which equates to 1.6 hours of views. This lets us know that people may not have felt comfortable recording their own videos, but they did spend time watching our videos and hearing our messages about safe driving as a result.

Sustainability:
For our project we tried to reach out to as many people in the community as possible, especially when we were stuck at home during the quarantine. Even though people weren’t driving as much, the extra time spent at home gave them a chance to slow down and think about safe driving habits and how to be a safer driver as our state begins to reopen.

Unexpected Lessons Learned:
Many staff members reached out to us during Safe Driving Spirit Week to tell us how they were previously impacted by an unsafe driver. Some staff members also thanked us for reminding them of what to do and not do while driving because even as seasoned drivers they still forget sometimes.

Stipend Reporting:

  • Lollipops and keychains: $238.28
  • Safe Driving Week Prizes: $225
  • Safe Driving Scholarship: $250

Total: $713.28

MEDIA