- It has supported the initiative since its inception seven years ago
- More than 19,000 Canarian schoolchildren took part in the program during its last edition
For the seventh straight year, Fundación Cepsa has pledged its support for the campaign to promote road safety on the archipelago under the `Canarias Conduce Segura´ initiative. The partnership agreement was signed this morning by José Manuel Fernández-Sabugo, Cepsa's Canary Islands Director and representative of Fundación Cepsa on the Islands, and by Vidal Arencibia, head of the company behind the initiative, Canarias Driving.
`Canarias Conduce Segura´ aims to raise awareness and sensitize children and young people to the dangers of failing to act safely as passengers, pedestrians and, down the line, as drivers. Talks are delivered to pupils and teachers alike at schools and institutes with the aim of improving road safety, championing values-based education among Canarian schoolchildren, reducing the risk of accidents among participating pupils and creating positive behavioral models.
The initiative, which has been supported by Fundación Cepsa since its inception seven years ago, along with other public and private entities, will once again be touring schools across the Canary Islands from October of this year through to June 2020 in order to give informative talks aimed at pupils and teachers. Meanwhile, practical workshops will be staged over the course of the academic year at companies and at popular public events aimed at families.
For José Manuel Fernández-Sabugo, Cepsa's Canary Islands Director and representative of Fundación Cepsa on the Islands, "one of the central pillars of this campaign is to offer safe driving advice and raise levels of awareness and education among future generations of drivers. Young people have a big role to play when it comes to the road safety of families, as they absorb all the knowledge they receive and then share it within the household, sometimes even telling their parents off when they drive unsafely on the road.
He adds that "the use of highly visual tools such as crash simulators and virtual reality glasses are enormously helpful in raising awareness of the risks we face on the road and in correcting bad habits before it's too late.”
Meanwhile, Vidal Arencibia says that "for Canarias Conduce Segura it is a challenge to raise awareness and train people in road safety year after year. Therefore, the support of Fundación Cepsa has been essential since the birth of our program. We will be satisfied if we manage to get just one percent of those who listen to us at each talk or workshop to actually apply the positive behaviors we attempting to convey.
The last edition of the campaign reached out to over 19,000 schoolchildren through a total of 575 talks at primary and secondary schools across the Canary Islands, showing a vast improvement on the first edition of the program, which saw 1,900 pupils take part over 40 days.