WATCH: Mulbarton resident Kathy Groome provides Injury Prevention Training Programme
Risk Facts of Life is the only company in South Africa, and possibly worldwide, that has a comprehensive Injury Prevention Training Programme covering all ages.
Inspiring others to care
MULBARTON resident Kathy Groome is part of an organisation called RISK Facts of Life, who provides injury training prevention training for babies, children and adults.
They train the ABC’s of safe living to our diverse South African society by teaching people how to love and nurture each other across all age gaps.
Kathy has been in adult education since 1990 and studied BA communication science.
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Kathy is passionate about comprehensive injury prevention training. This kind of training results in “child upward” and “adult downward” behaviour changes in injury prevention and awareness.
“An example of this is that children learn to remind their parents to be safe, for instance when they get into a car, a child will remind a parent to buckle up,” Kathy said.
The ABC’s of Life
“We felt that there needed to be more outreach and awareness of injury prevention because all injuries can be prevented,” Kathy said.
Module courses were written, and these were initially aimed at adults, caregivers, au-pairs, grandparents, moms, and dads.
They soon realised that a great approach would not only be teaching teachers and parents etc. but that they could rather educate children.
Kathy has received feedback where a little girl of five told her little brother of three not to get into the bath until their mom has checked the water because the little girl had been taught about burns.
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“We found that we underestimate three and four-year-olds, but they are very aware if we teach them in a fun way and that’s when we developed Murphy MacSafety.
Murphy MacSafety will make you a safety hero
Murphy MacSafety is RISK’s mascot and he wants all kids to be safety heroes.
“We get great results from the little ones when we use Murphy because he engages the children straight away,” said Kathy.
Through various learning modules, children collect badges, covering subjects such as gun safety, the dangers of fire, shopping mall safety, safe and dangerous strangers, their bodies, privacy and emotions and what to do should they experience abuse.
“We ask them to have five safe adults in their lives, whether it is an aunt or a teacher because it might be mom or dad that are the abusers,” Kathy added.
They also educate 11 to 14-year-old children on subjects such as cyberbullying, drug abuse and sexting.
RISK has primarily been involved with schools in Johannesburg South, Soweto, Eldorado Park, Lenasia and Ennerdale.
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Creating Awareness
In conjunction with Mondeor Community Forum and Lenmed Hospital Group, RISK creates awareness campaigns for gardeners and domestic workers. Subjects covered include basic CPR, fire control, treating knife wounds, spider and snake bites and burns.
RISK also runs stroke awareness campaigns at old age homes in Eldorado and Johannesburg South.
Other campaigns run at Mall of the South and Protea Glen Shopping Mall in Soweto focused on car safety issues, such as teaching parents and children to buckle up.
RISK has run drug-awareness campaigns at schools, where they afford children the opportunity to come forward and ask for help for addiction-related issues. In such cases they set up help and support for these children.
“If we can help even one child, then that child might lookout for another,” Kathy added.
Inspiring others to care
“I really feel that one of the big problems with South Africans is that we actually just don’t care about each other.
“There’s a sense of empowerment in children that are taught what to do in an emergency and with that comes a caring,” Kathy said.
“It has to be done in a systematic way. There has to be behavioural change in all of us, otherwise it does not work. I want us to care for each other.”
For more information visit: https://www.riskfactsoflife.com/
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