Total South Africa, through Bakwena Platinum Corridor Concessionaire, operator of the N1N4 highway, has donated seven Road Safety Cubes to primary schools along its route, to teach children the importance of road safety. Bakwena is sponsoring all training sessions and implementation activities.

The Cube road safety programme, an initiative of Total worldwide, involves using practical demonstrations and interactive sessions to educate young learners about road safety to create awareness of the road rules and signs.

“These educational aids are an innovative and practical means of enabling teachers to coach Grade 4 students on the basics of road safety in a classroom environment,” explains Bakwena’s commercial manager, Liam Clarke. “Each Cube contains workbooks for each learner, as well as a workbook for the teacher. The Cube also contains pieces of artificial road which can be connected in different modes, together with miniature road signs that can be placed alongside the road according to how it was assembled. This enables learners to practice their road safety using intersections, straight roads or situations they need to beware of. On completion of the course, each learner will receive a certificate, a reflective sticker for safe walking along roads, and a set of coloured pencils.”

The project will climax with an inter-school quiz competition in October, as part of the Transport Month activities.

“To ensure the materials are accurate and in context, we had them assessed by the North West Departments of Road Safety and Education,” says Clarke. Training has already been delivered to 16 teachers from eight primary schools, as well as road safety officers from the Bojanala District and Ngaka Modiri Molema. Training was extended to the Department of Education Safe Schools representatives from Rustenburg and Mahikeng. The Bakwena Disaster Team will also assist with the implementation of the project.

The following schools will take part: Leokeng Primary School; Seroophata Primary School; Majakaneng Primary School; Nkukime Primary School; St Catherine Primary School; Kgwanyape Primary School; Bapo Primary School; and Segwetlhane Primary School.