The Chatham-Kent Children’s Safety Village (CKCSV) is looking to expand its programs, and it’s kicking off an awareness campaign with a cute commercial.
Young Brianna Corbin, 7, is the main character in a video advertisement for the CKCSV promoting electrical safety in the home.
In the video, her “dad,” played by Sam Shoebottom, uses a knife to try to get his bread out of a toaster.
He received a shocking dose of reality.
Gary Patterson, board president at the CKCSV, said the safety village opted to “take the lighter side” in creating this commercial. It depicts Corbin preaching safety while her bumbling father gets zapped in the background.
It illustrates the need for all ages to be more safety cognizant. Patterson said the village wants to be the central piece in such education.
“We want to become the safety hub of Chatham-Kent, not just for children. We want to encompass everything,” he said, including home and workplace safety.
Patterson said the village was underutilized with the old format. Students in grades 1, 4 and 6 would visit the village to learn about everyday safety. But under the new format, beginning in September, the village will offer education for students in grades 1 through 8 – and beyond.
“We had to make changes to our format. We are rebranding,” he said. “We were running programs for only 18 weeks out of the year. This building was underutilized. Now we will have 32 weeks of programming. We’ll have a larger impact on more people.”
Corbin’s commercial is part of that rebranding. Patterson said a private donor paid Maverick Media to produce the ad.
Rick Walker of Maverick said the commercial will air on CTV2, the CBC and will be prevalent on various social media platforms.
Corbin, a Grade 2 student at McNaughton Avenue Public School, said she enjoyed being part of the commercial, and believes safety education is important for children and adults.
She recalled being at the village last year and learning about electrical safety.
Corbin’s favourite part of the commercial was being able to see the finished product. She added she took a while to get all her lines down pat.
Corbin said kids need to remind their parents about doing things safely.
“Sometimes parents do things wrong and they just do what they learned when they were younger,” she said.
Thanks to safety education for children, Patterson said kids today often do pass on their safety tips to their parents, including such items as having a fire exit plan in the home, and not texting while driving.
The safety village is partnered with local police, fire and EMS, as well as a number of local businesses, and has added the OPP to the mix.
Patterson said some of the education that will be provided to older students is that of social safety, such as anti-bullying and life skills.
“Young people go through bumps. It’s tough being a kid these days,” he said. “The suicide rate is too high.”
Adult programs will include slip-and-fall prevention, as well as crime prevention.
School programming at the village ends at 1:30 p.m., Patterson said. He’d like to see adult programs, especially for seniors, begin shortly thereafter.
Plans are to also offer evening programs for people who work during the day.
Patterson said the biggest cost to schools for utilizing the safety village is busing. He also believes mindsets in some case need to be changed in terms of how teachers view the village.
“Our programs with police and fire are curriculum based,” he said. “But schools still look at this as a field trip. It’s really an out-of-class experience.”
He said there is no way to transport the smoke room, where children learn what to do to avoid the smoke if there is a fire, cannot be transported to a school.
Every program comes with an expense. Patterson said the safety village receives no government funding and the quest is on to raise money to fuel the safety hub concept, including using GoFundMe.com.
