The RYDA (Rotary Youth Driving Awareness) program was first introduced to the Bay of Plenty in 2019 - but what does this program cover?
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The RYDA program was first introduced to the Bay of Plenty 2019, by Tauranga Te Papa, Tauranga and Papamoa Rotary Clubs, in conjunction with Road Safety Education New Zealand, who provide the trained facilitators.
Since its introduction into the Bay of Plenty, we now have 5 Rotary clubs working together collectively. Rotary clubs of Tauranga Te Papa, Papamoa, Tauranga, Tauranga Sunrise and Katikati.
Nationally during 2021, 11000 Year 12 students have attended a RYDA course and in the Bay, we have placed approximately 600 students through from Paeroa Waihi and Katikati Colleges and Mount and Tauranga Girls colleges.
Support funding for the courses has been provided from both Rotary and the Regional Council. Every RYDA run course receives $2000-00 from the Rotary collective.
Following very favourable feedback from teachers and students alike last year, the program will be offered to ALL of our Colleges from Waihi to Tauranga during 2022, with colleges being approached now for their slot in the 2022 course calendar.
Each day’s program contains six separate interactive seminars designed to raise awareness of road safety among the students as they begin their ‘driving lives’. Each 30-minute Seminar deals with issues such as:
- The ‘I’ in Drive- Focusing on knowing yourself, Self-control, thinking social, Risk awareness and Speaking up. Helping students creating usable strategies for each category.
- Mind Matters- Focusing on the driver’s mind state when driving and how it positively / negatively can affect their driving.
- Road Choices- Discussing licenses and options, making the right choices when behind the wheel, consequences of bad choices, lack of sleep, alcohol, drugs.
- Speed and Safety- Car Safety Features, Stopping Distances and Following Distances
- Drive SOS-Keeping others safe on the road (peripheral vision, blind spots, and distractions)
- Crash Investigations- (identifying the factors that impact on crash outcomes)
In total we strive to put upwards of 1000 Year 12’s through the program resulting in them gaining a greater awareness as they begin to drive, and fewer accidents in their lives
Volume 9
RYDA February to June update
It has been a busy few months as we have been around the country delivering RYDA programmes. Despite challenges with weather events and teacher strikes we still managed to have a record attendance year with 11,155 students participating in RYDA workshops across 98 workshops. We were please to run in these new areas this year; New Plymouth, Whanganui, Morrinsville, Ngaruawahia, Rotorua and Rangiora.
In addition we hit a huge milestone celebrating 100,000 students since we started in 2007. Lucy Campbell was our 100,000 student from Ashburton College and we celebrated with yellow cupcakes and Lucy was presented with a certificate to mark the occasion. We would like to acknowledge and thank the Rotary clubs who have been on this 17 year journey with us in particular the Rotary Club of Takapuna who initially bought this programme to NZ.
Alongside record attendance we have also been working more deeply with schools this year through our dedicated educator Graeme. His role is to encourage schools to use pre and post workshop resources back in the classroom so the RYDA learning extends and deepens the impact with students. A recent survey with our RYDA schools shows that 35% of schools are doing pre-work and 50% are doing post workshop work. This reinforcement is great and will improve our student outcomes long term. See the St Cuthbert's story below for an example of this in practice.
We were very pleased to welcome Toyota NZ on as one of our corporate partners in May this year. The partnership comes at a good time due to our growth and with their help we will be able to run even more programmes next year. As part of the partnership they will be providing our Programme Coordinators sign written cars for use in Speed and Stopping.
Road Safety Week
Road Safety Week, 15th - 21st May, had a focus on Road Safety Heroes and each region brought their own interpretation to this with a variety of activities happening throughout the country. Several large cities lit up various major landmarks in yellow to celebrate and many events were run to get the road safety message out into the communities. RYDA ran workshop days over that week in Whanganui, Rangiora, Pukekohe, Auckland, and Christchurch. We think that all our students are Road Safety Heroes in training so we had some fun with super hero messages during the week at RYDA workshops.
Our Road Safety Heroes from Onewhero and Ruapehu Colleges.
Road Safety Award Winners
Pat Clay from The Rotary Club of Blenheim was the recipient of our BOC Champion Supporting Excellence Award. Pat is a Rotary volunteer who has gone above and beyond to help us run our RYDA programmes. Pat has helped us run RYDA in Marlborough for over 10 years, coordinating volunteers and catering for the workshops. Pat has also helped us with Rotary contacts in the South Island. A very big thank you Pat, from everyone at RSE.