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Children's safety village planned for south of Hanover By Liz Dadson |
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Al Leach of Saugeen Valley Children's Safety Village A small community will soon be springing up on a five-acre parcel of land at the Saugeen Valley Conservation Authority headquarters, south of Hanover. It's a children's safety village which will welcome about 10,000 youngsters, from Kindergarten to Grade 6, in Bruce, Grey, Huron and Perth counties, each year. Al Leach, the lead proponent of the project, was at Kincardine council Wednesday night (Sept. 1), explaining what the safety village is all about. The focus is to teach children various aspects of safety in order to eliminate injuries. The project includes a hall for classroom instruction and a miniature village for children to practise what they have learned and experience safety activities. Leach said there are 12 safety villages in Ontario, but this is the first rural-oriented one. He said the classroom will be in a town hall building where police, fire and ambulance officers will teach children about safety. This structure will include a fire evacuation room, Sparky's Apartment, where children can actually go through the actions required to get out of a burning house. The miniature village portion will include down-sized buildings, detailed scaled-down roadways, traffic lights, road signs, pedestrian crossings, sidewalks and interactive sights, such as a 911 phone booth and a transmission site. Leach said the safety village will hopefully combat some serious injury statistics in children. Based on national figures for 2005, he said there were 720 deaths, 35,604 hospitalizations, and an economic burden of $19.7 billion which includes the cost of injuries to all Canadians.
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"If we can prevent the serious injury or save the life of one child, that's priceless," said Leach. The founding group has been incorporated and has all the accounting, administration and organizational structure in place to take care of the village, he said. The Bluewater District School Board and Grey-Bruce Catholic District School Board are supportive of the project, as are numerous other groups and emergency personnel. Leach said there are seven police agencies in Bruce and Grey counties and they each have an officer out in the community teaching about safety. With an officer doing that at the village, this project would free up a lot of manpower and reduce the policing costs for area municipalities. "We're all very excited about this moving forward," said Leach. "We're looking for grants and have already talked to the Trillium Foundation. We have received donations from Bruce Power and the Power Workers' Union for this. We're planning the official launch party on Sept. 15; then the fund-raising begins." He said the cost to build the main classroom will be about $1.2 million, while the miniature village will come in at around $250,000. It's hoped that various service clubs and individual businesses will come on-board, purchase a pad and put up a building. Cost of a small pad (12-feet-by-12-feet) is $10,000, while the cost of a large pad (12-feet-by-20-feet) is $15,000. There will be room for 23 miniature structures on the site, said Leach, and they are basically shells with the adornments on the outside. Some will be functioning buildings such as the police and fire stations, while others can be used for storage. A board of directors will operate the facility, said Leach, with the day-to-day operations done by an administrator, a program co-ordinator and a maintenance person. The village will run year-round, tied to the school year and Leach said it should be operational by September of 2011. There is no cost to the children to attend the program.
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