Bob Clute introduced Jill Raycroft, a long time resident of Belleville who has brought her life-long learning skills and vision as well as her entrepreneurial experience to the Children's Safety Village as Executive Director.  A compelling story of children and their safety in this community.
 
The Children's Safety Village is a unique community resource.  Safety Villages or Traffic Parks (as they are known outside of North America) are built to supplement classroom lessons about safety.  Built on the philosophy "involve me and I will understand", the Village is a child-sized model of our community, complete with City Hall, a fire hall, a train station, a church and various other businesses built around a small network of streets.  The functioning traffic lights, railway crossing arms, phone booth (for practicing 911 calls) all add to the experience.
 
Unintentional injuries remain the leading cause of death in children (and adults).  In 2012, the Canadian Pediatric Society, Injury Prevention Committee noted that "some countries began implementing strong injury prevention (IP) policies and infrastructure several decades ago and now achieve the lowest injury rates in the world".  A commonly cited example is Sweden.  If Canada enjoyed the same child injury rate as Sweden from 1991 to 1995:
 
  • 1,233 children would not have died
  • 23,000 to 50,000 would not have been hospitalized
  • more than 250,000 would not have visited emergency departments
Cyclist or pedestrian injury is the second leading cause of injury in children between the ages of 5 and 9 years old.  Vehicle restraints are also a leading cause.  Although Jill did not have solid figures around the incidents of injury in our area, it will be the intention of the Children's Safety Village to start tracking these numbers.
 
Children come to the Village in Grades 2, 3 and 4.  The curriculum and programs were developed in partnership with the Hastings-Prince Edward Public Health Unit.  Each visit begins with a review of pedestrian safety, traffic signs and signals and appropriate safe behaviours.  The program is delivered by a uniformed police officer.  In Grade 2 students practice what they learn by walking through the streets of the Village, obeying the signals and making a 911 call.  In Grade 3, they get to practice again driving miniature jeeps.  In Grade 4 they add on bicycle safety rules, hand signals and helmet fitting.  In addition to the safety lessons the children will learn, they build relationships with the officer, reducing some interactions that may have been stressful and conflicted.  When children have the opportunity to see an officer as a friend and protector, it helps keep them calm when they are in a less controlled situation.
 
The primary target of the Children's Safety Village is the teachers of Grades 2, 3 and 4 who use the Village as a field trip.  The Village is one of many options, but with restricted transportation budgets, the Village is not always the first choice.  Jill pointed out that the Village believes children benefit in a long term way and if one child is saved from an unintentional injury because they knew how to pay attention to the street light or wore their bike helmet in the proper way, their visit to the Village has made this resource worthwhile.
 
There are Safety Villages around the world and there are 11 in Ontario, but Belleville is the only permanent Safety Village east of Whitby.  In 2003 then Deputy Chief Brian Harder took the idea to a man named Jake Nelson with the Quinte Home Builders Association and under the leadership of Eric DenOuden, they took up the torch and reached out to the community for the funds to build the Village.  The City provided the land and permits, the Police Service committed to provide an officer and over 150 businesses, service clubs and individuals helped raise nearly $600,000 to make it happen.  For nearly 11 years, the Village has been operating, debt free through a volunteer Board and committed partners who tirelessly continue to maintain the buildings and reach out to the community.  Jill's job is to raise awareness of the Safety Village in the community and she is very excited to see the numbers jump from 80 children in October to over 400 who visited the Christmas in the Village event in December 2015.  Little feet love the Village's little streets.  There is a classroom where children can do crafts and learn about safety in a classroom setting.  Jill is looking forward to working on some other local events and gearing up for a fundraising campaign.  There are two needs, one is maintaining the Village buildings and the second is to work with the school board to support transportation needs to ensure the students get to the Village.
 
Jill was thanked by Brenda Snider who reiterated that we all learn by doing.