Seton Hall University
Stay Alert, Save Lives
How many students heard the message of your project?
110
Project Description:
We are conducting The Crash Project 2025 for a nonprofit organization, “Brain Injury Alliance of NJ”. Our goal is to spread awareness for distracted driving and pedestrian safety especially for college students in the South Orange community. We decided to host 3 events all in our school’s University Center. Our events consisted of tabling events and a Q&A activity to inform and encourage change. Everyone that participated in our events signed the pledge and would receive a sweet treat and merch that included our slogan and mascot. Our merchandise such as air fresheners, pins, t-shirts, sunglasses, and stickers weren’t meant only to target students, but also anyone who is a driver or a user of public transportation.
School/Community Engagement:
Our strategy team was able to conduct a survey for people around the South Orange community to understand what a big concern for drivers in the area is. They collected data from students, businesses and the police department in South Orange to determine the audience we wanted to reach. This is how our group decided to focus on raising awareness for distracted driving. We also created event posters on our Instagram page and hung flyers in different buildings of our University to encourage people to come and support our cause. There was an article posted about the Crash Project 2025 in our school’s newspaper which reached a wider audience.
Creativity:
We brought awareness to the BIANJ campaign with campus events and social media posts. We made boring “tabling” events fun with interactive elements. These included playing safe driving trivia to win prizes like sunglasses, stickers, air fresheners, cookies, and 2 Owala water bottles! We used a wheel to attract students to play our trivia game and included prizes guaranteed to interest students. There was also a customized face posterboard cutout that we set up next to our table. It caught students’ attention since it had a large image of our slogan and our deer mascot. Students could take a photo of themselves with the face cut out so it would look like they were the face of the deer. These photos were later posted on our social media accounts. We interviewed students to have content to post on our Instagram and TikTok pages. We also interviewed a handful of employees from businesses in the South Orange area and placed flyers in their stores. The questions for the interviews were geared toward understanding how distracted driving affected individuals and how South Orange could improve their road safety. The posters included brief information about our mission and a QR code to sign the driver safety pledge. This brought more awareness to our campaign and us closer to the 100-signature goal requirement.
Use of Resources:
Our group has done a lot of research and interviews in order to help spread awareness to the issue of distracted driving. Several of our group members went to local businesses in order to ask them about the driving conditions in South Orange. By gathering this information, we were able to get insight into how residents felt about the safety of South Orange. After we explained to them what our nonprofit organization was, we asked if we were able to hang flyers in their stores. This way our nonprofit is able to spread to more people in hopes that the driving conditions will become better in the future. During these interviews we also took pictures at the business in order to share our own social media page. Sharing photos of group members being active in society shows that our nonprofit is driven to help and work towards the cause. We use the BIANJ page for statistics for our flyers. Our social media team posts every week and shares our progress during this project. On top of that they share when we will be hosting tabling events on campus, so students are aware. They also share statistics about distracted driving on their page to show how much of a prominent issue it is in today’s society.
Evaluation and Impact:
We measured community engagement by keeping track of how many people take our pledge when it comes to being a safe driver in South Orange. This pledge was given to students at the University of all ages to see how many of us pledge to be a safe driver in the area. We’ve conducted a survey asking people about their experience of safe driving around South Orange and what they think could be better. Able to gather a quote from worker at the Village Trattoria pizza restaurant about how they feel about safe driving is in the area and what everyone can do to improve it. Campus events in the University Center spreading the messages of our campaign and having people take the pledge on becoming a safe driver along with them following our socials to stay up to date on all going on with our campaign. Fun community engagement at the University Center like question answering games to attract crowds and inform them on our mission. In return they could walk away with some sort of surprise like some candy/snacks, some nice stickers to put om your computer or even some sweet sunglasses or our very own CRASH PROJECT tee shirt.
PROJECT MEDIA
