palanpuronline

News & Events

News Room >> News & Event >> News Content

25 Aug 2017

Rupa Kothari led “Safe Kids at Home” Programme Wins Global Excellence Award

The Safe Kids at Home, an interactive school and community based educational fire safety programme launched by Safe Kids Foundation (SKF), received the Excellence in Home Safety - Global Award at Safe Kids Worldwide’s Prevcon Baltimore, July 27, 2017. The organisation was selected for the top honours among similar programmes across 32 countries.

Rupa Kothari, Managing Trustee of SKF and Dr. Cinthia Pinto, Program Director received the award and were honoured for their outstanding efforts in advancing home safety for children in India. Rupa Kothari is the wife of Sanjay Nanalal Kothari. Safe Kids Foundation was set up in India by Mahendrabhai Mehta and Ashaben Mehta.

The annual prevention conference of SK Worldwide was attended by more than 600 injury prevention experts from hundreds of communities across the United States and more than 30 countries around the globe.

Safe Kids Foundation (SKF) is an organization dedicated to the prevention of unintentional childhood injuries, which is the leading cause of death and disability of children globally. The goal of the organization is to bring about changes in attitudes, behavior, practices and environment.

The fire safety programme was launched Pune in 2015 with support from Honeywell. It focuses on preventing fire and burn injuries among children below 14 years of age through training and awareness campaigns in the schools and communities.

In the last one and a half years, the programme has reached out to 1,90,000 students from 656 schools and 1,41,000 parents from 219 communities. Safe Kids Foundation has pioneered model fire safe schools and communities with an aim of making Pune a model ‘Safe Kids at Home’ city in India. The programme aspires to bring together citizens and civic bodies who can lead the way. After a successful implementation of the programme in Pune Municipal Corporation, it will be now be scaled up to Pimpri Chinchwad area and will reach out to a total of 425,000 students and 250,000 parents by the end of March 2018.

Some of the major achievements of the SKF include;

• Pioneered 100 model fire safe schools and 20 model fire safe communities in Pune

• Pioneered the formation of 106 ‘Agni SurakshaMitras’ (Fire Safety Volunteers), in Pune.

• Received an endorsement from Mr. D.K. Shami, Fire Adviser, Directorate General Fire Service, Civil Defense & Home Guards (Fire Cell), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.

• Safe Kids at Home program resources are now part of the national fire and evacuation drills and each state and union teritories have been provided with Safe Kids at Home Educator’s Guide and Toolkit.

• Safe Kids Foundation in collaboration with the Fire Department, PMC, organized 31 fire and evacuation drills in schools, colleges, malls, hospitals, housing societies and slum communities reaching out to 23,000 students and parents.

The SKF also runs the “Safe Kids Walk This Way”, a pedestrian safety programme launched in 2007 which covers more than 1,50,000 children each year through educational sessions in over 250 schools and “Safe Kids Wheels to Road Safety”, a road safety programme to teach safe travel in bus, auto rickshaw, bicycle, pedestrian safety and use of seat belt, that will be launched in the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation area in September, 2017.

Pic caption (l to r):

Dr. Cinthia Pinto, program director, Safe Kids Foundation; TorineCreppy, acting president and chief program officer, Safe Kids Worldwide; Rupa Kothari, trustee and executive director, Safe Kids Foundation; Emily Samuel, program manager, Safe Kids Worldwide