See It: The Community being helped

In the past two years South Windsor High School has lost two students to car accidents where speed was a major factor. South Windsor High School SADD group is working with their police to perform seatbelt checks as students leave school. They will be checking to make sure students are wearing seatbelts in the front of the car as well as in the backseats. Students who are wearing seatbelts will receive "Smarties" candy. Students not wearing seatbelts will be issued a ticket as well as a "Dum-Dum" lollipop. Both sets of students will also receive a seatbelt safety fact with their candies. The SADD group will also have a display case in the school with information on smart driving including seat belt safety, distracted driving, speeding and statistics on teen accidents. SADD will also find a speaker who has personally been affected by a car accident due to unsafe teen driving to come and speak to students.

See It: The Community being helped

My idea to promote safer driving among teens through a series of posters that can be put up around schools. These posters will provide certain scenarios that are common among teen drivers in today's world, such as talking on your cell phone, texting, eating or drinking, putting on your make-up, etc. while driving. They will basically show the worst case scenario: life vs. death. The idea is that if you do these things while driving, you are putting your life on the line. Doing other things (such as talking on your cell phone) while driving is a bad idea because your full attention is not on the road. Multi-tasking when driving should not even be a consideration. When you are not paying attention to the road, you are putting yourself and others in danger.yupperz

If I receive the $500 grant, I plan on designing and printing hundreds of posters that I can hang at school, around the neighborhood, church, and other public places. If this is a success, I could also make stickers to hand out in public teen hangouts. I could also hang them up in places such as the DMV, when kids are first getting their licenses, or at places like Cingular stores, where kids buy cell phones.

I am also considering the possibility of creating t-shirt designs. I already design and make t-shirts for my friends, and a lot of people comment on them and ask where they can get t-shirts like them. I would like to take the Smart-Driver concept and reproduce it on t-shirts as well. A teenager's wardrobe makes a big statement and is always very noticeable to other teens. This would be like a walking advertisement.

See It: The Community being helped

We will write, create, film, edit, and broadcast a movie about wearing seatbelt. We'll have several RC Cars in our environment, all with some sort of passenger (e.g. a doll taped, or not taped, to it). Upon the collision of these vehicles, the doll with the tape-seatbelt will stay safe in the car, but the non-taped-seatbelt one will go flying to an untimely demise. We believe that the comic nature of this sort of movie will capture the mind of the students, because it is unlike all the other movies we watch in school. We will broadcast this movie over the school's television system, which reaches approximately 1300 students.