The Co-operative Motor Group Helps School Children Play It Safe

A West Yorkshire centre that teaches primary school children about healthy living and good citizenship has been given a financial boost by The Co-operative Motor Group.

The Positive Lifestyle Centre (PLC) – based within the Bantams Business Centre at Bradford City’s Valley Parade football stadium – received £2,500 from The Co-operative Motor Group to help it further develop existing personal safety sessions with a greater focus on road safety.

The new sessions now include discussions on “what makes me safe”, role play of road safety scenarios and a variety of road safety games and activities.

The need for booster seats is also explained to the children, following the introduction of new laws in September 2006 which make it illegal for a child to travel in a car without an EU approved child car restraint appropriate for their age.

The Co-operative Motor Group marketing manager Matthew Ward said: “We think the PLC is a fantastic resource for schools from throughout Yorkshire to access, and we wanted to do our bit to help it deliver important road safety messages.

“In addition to the cash donation, we were delighted to be able to donate reflective armbands for children, together with a giant measuring chart so that they can measure their height to see if they need to use a booster seat (less than 1.35m).

“We also loaned the PLC a car seat for use in demonstrating why booster seats can save lives.”

Year three youngsters from Lees Primary School, Keighley, were among the first to benefit from the new safety sessions, which were also attended by school’s liaison officer PC Brian Feather and The Co-operative Motor Group staff Rachel Crabtree (human resources co-ordinator), Sam Jeyaraman (sales executive),  Joanne Priestly (receptionist) and Matthew Ward (group marketing manager).

Children split into teams to play games and activities based on spotting dangers on the road. The Co-operative Motor Group staff then helped the PLC education manager Claire Sharpe deliver important road safety messages through role play, took part in a review session looking at “one thing that could make you a safer person”, and judged the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award.

Lees Primary School teacher Helen Keighley said: “I was very impressed with how the PLC delivers road safety messages to the children.

“It’s very important that they learn these lessons at a young age and being here at the PLC seems to help them retain the information that much better because it is part of a special day out, away from their usual classroom environment.”

PLC education manager Claire Sharpe said the PLC is a social enterprise not-for-profit organisation and is therefore always looking for new sources of funding.

“We are extremely grateful for this donation. Without the support of organisations like The Co-operative Motor Group we would find it extremely difficult to keep the centre going,” she said.