Hello, lifesavers! Attending public events, Preparing advertising materials, Participating at interesting training courses,

Transcription

1 Hello, lifesavers! My name is Birgit Vahemets. I am 18 years old and graduated this spring from a high school in Tallinn, Estonia. I am very pleased to represent Estonia at this wonderful event this year. I have been involved in Operation Lifesaver Estonia from its foundation, from the beginning of Actually, I have been aware of the railway safety matters since my childhood. I was three when my father started to work as the Head of Security of Estonian Railways. His duties included the inspection of all railway incident sites and identification of their possible causes. I was then very young and although the press did not talk much about these incidents at that time, it was easy for me to understand from looking at my father whether it had been a peaceful day for the railway or had there been an incident. It could be understood from his voice, mood, everything. For him the incidents were not just numbers in the different columns of a table but rather interrupted lives that had barely begun, broken dreams, families and hopes for a better future. Five years ago when my father founded OLE I wanted to help him in any way I could. The organization working on the enthusiasm of volunteers needs every little help and therefore I could also contribute to its efforts by Attending public events, Preparing advertising materials, Participating at interesting training courses, Participating at teambuilding events and so on. 1

2 During all these years I have been very grateful for the opportunity to spend time among people who do not count their working hours and are not looking for remuneration for their efforts. These people care about the others, themselves and all humans. Their greatest joy is to admit in the end of a day that they have been able to make our world a safer place to live. They are true lifesavers. I am happy to feel as a part of this wonderful family. Now I would like to tell you briefly about our activities during the last couple of years and first some words about our Campaigns Despite to the difficult economic situation of the railway companies being OLE s members, they still continued funding our work. Their continuing support allowed us to organize our traditional Railway Safety Week, Christmas and summer campaigns also in 2008 and Our campaigns address the problematic attitudes identified on the basis of railway statistics and the objective of our campaigns is changing such wrong attitudes. The language of our campaigns is caring and touching human emotions. We deliberately avoid violence and shock therapy. We pay a lot of attention to the quality of both content and design of our advertising materials. We were pleasantly surprised when we heard about the decision of OL headquarters in the USA to use the materials developed by us in their 2008 Christmas campaign. This was a great recognition of our work and gave us a good opportunity not to be just the consumer of OL s materials but also contribute to producing them. Last year we prepared our digital drawing board and we were very happy to see that our Canadian colleagues have started to use it as well. Two years ago we introduced to you two characters: the Traffic Light Boy and Sparkies whom we have been using actively over the last three years keeping in mind the multicultural society of Europe. (Foorika video) Last year was the year of introducing the Sparkies in Estonia. We used them in all of our campaigns and they could be seen all over Estonia on posters and nearby level crossings. A survey conducted by our outdoor media partner JC Decaux shows that our characters are remembered by people even if the campaign message has 2

3 been forgotten. The Traffic Light Boy and the Sparkies can be easily connected with railways and adapted in advertising and training materials of various countries. The good news also is that new Sparkies come along as necessary and each of them deals with its own specific area. The Railway Safety Week we organized in the end of this April brought to the streets our new campaign: RED is RED. The purpose of the campaign was to point out for the general public that the red lights burning at railway level crossings are as important as the red traffic lights on streets. The campaign message was born during the presentations made by our volunteer presenters it appeared that many pedestrians thought that the traffic lights on railway level crossings are meant just for motor vehicle drivers. This campaign received a lot of positive feedback. One publication even said about it: It cannot be made any simpler and a person who does still not understand this should go and see a doctor. Cooperation It is very important for OLE that by today we have signed cooperation agreements with all regional police departments and thus created a nationwide network of partners. In the daily work our main partners are the police officers dealing with youth issues who make traffic safety presentations in schools. Until today they spoke about railway safety issues rarely or not at all. We can be now sure that people presenting railway safety issues use the slides developed by us and a common vocabulary. We are very grateful to the Estonian Railway Culture Foundation, funded by the former shareholders of Estonian Railways, for their continuing support to our projects. Thanks to this foundation we equipped all our regions with first-class presentation equipment kits. Last year the foundation helped us to buy exhibition equipment including a weather proof tent where in addition to solving crossword puzzles on railway safety, watching safety clips from a screed and doing other interesting things, our visitors can also digitally paint drawings on railway safety, print them and take home. This spring we realized the idea suggested by the CEO of Estonian Railways Mr. Simmermann already several years ago and gave out more than 3300 signal vests to kindergartens located in the proximity of railway. 3

4 This project was my largest as well as the most emotional one so far, as it was targeted at our youngest citizens who are for their parents the most important people in the world. One of the parents said, while admiring one of our yellow vests that she is happy to know that her children are cared about and she can be sure that a child left in the kindergarten in the morning can be taken home safe and sound in the evening. On the vests we printed the first safety message of those people just beginning their lives. The message on the back of the vest says Look, Listen and Live, whereas the Sparkies in the front say Let s Save Lives. The list of our cooperation partners continues to get longer - from media publications to driving schools. Once a year we organize an event of gratitude called Golden Level Crossing Gates where we invite all our cooperation partners, present information on previous year s activities and hand out our token of gratitude, The Golden Level Crossing Gates Award. This award is given to a company or private person whose main activities are not related to railways but who has still contributed substantially to promoting railway safety. Last year the Golden Level Crossing Gates award was presented to the Estonian Police and this year to a small department of the Estonian Rescue Board thanks to whom the railway safety related issues have been included in the prevention work program of several sub-units of the Rescue Board. The management of OLE found that it should recognize also the persons who daily work is related to railways or railway safety for which this year was founded the OLE Honorary Medal that was given to three persons. Results It is very hard to prove that there exists a direct link between our work and reducing number of railway incidents. Despite to that, we are extremely proud of the fact that during our activities the number of fatal railway incidents has reduced in Estonia by more than 50 per cent. The Estonian Technical Surveillance Authority and the Estonian infrastructure managers being OLE s members have noticed that educating the general public helps to reduce the number of railway accidents and thus they have decided to contribute more to our work. Companies help us in the 4

5 process of preparing railway safety action plans and we also play an important role in the execution of such plans. Estonian Railways has prepared the Plan for Improving Public Railway Safety Situation in and 15 out of 27 measures described in the plan are implemented in cooperation with us. Most of these measures are of educational nature. For example: Railway companies improve level crossing safety equipment we train motor vehicle drivers. It often happens that after a railway incident the press turns to us for comments, asking what went wrong and how we prevent such things from happening in the future. We have worked hard for becoming experts and we are glad to see that we have achieved quite good results. International activities The main objective of the international activities of OLE is making railway safety promotion work more effective through continuous exchange of experience. This helps to save money and avoid the mistakes already made by somebody else. So we started our cooperation with the International Union of Railways UIC and participated in preparing the first European Level Crossing Awareness Day (ELCAD) on June 25, This event received positive feedback in all participating European countries and this year ELCAD has become ILCAD International Level Crossing Awareness Day celebrated on June 22. (VIDEO) To a great extent this happened thanks to the support of the Operation lifesaver family. We had the honor to represent the entire Operation Lifesaver in the ILCAD committee. OL Estonia made its contribution to ILCAD by preparing its logo and website design. Within the framework of this project, OL s logo has found its merited place next to UIC and other European railway organizations. On June 17, 2009 OLE joined the European Traffic Safety Charter and took several obligations for increasing people s awareness and reducing the number of tragic incidents. 5

6 What next? We will continue railway safety campaigns, lectures in schools and kindergartens and we will work hard to extend the circle of our cooperation partners. We are particularly active in the European direction, so that OLE s methodology would be used also in other European countries. For all of us that would mean a bigger idea bank, high-quality study materials, better campaigns and more saved lives. We will certainly continue to participate in all public events at the local level and make our contribution to the youth project initiated by the Estonian Rescue Board called Protect Yourself and Help the Others. During this project taking place during winter months, different safety experts (fire safety, traffic safety, waterways safety, railway safety, first aid, explosive handling etc) lecture in schools in order to communicate to the young generation knowledge about correct behavior in emergency situations. The results of the lectures will be tested during spring and summer in competitive field camps. One of next year s highlights for us will be organizing the international railway safety educational conference Let s Save Lives that will take place on March in Tallinn, our capital. In addition to the OL chairmen from the USA and Canada, the list of conference speakers includes also representatives of several European and Russian railway companies. For conclusion Looking back at OLE`s work, I am happy to see that we have found our place in the safety education landscape and proven that purposeful work can change attitudes in the entire society. Thank you for listening! 6