Keeping whānau safe, one postcard at a time

27 Whiringa-ā-nuku 2023

Community Risk teams in mid-South Canterbury and on the West Coast have found a great new way to make fire safety fun and memorable for local tamariki (children).   After delivering the Get Firewise programmes to local schools, the Community Risk Team returned to take students through a special postcard activity.   The children coloured in the Get Firewise-themed images and wrote out fire safety messages on the postcards. The back of the postcards also had information for whānau (family) about booking in a Home Fire Safety Visit.   The children then took the postcards home to share.

As the Get Firewise programmes have already been delivered to these two schools, the postcard activity was a practical and engaging way to keep up the kōrero (conversation) and continue students’ fire safety education.  

It was also ‘a simple and easily accessible way to help break down language and literacy barriers for whānau around the important topic of fire safety in the home’ says Tash Rankin, volunteer firefighter and former mid-South Canterbury Community Risk team member. 

‘I wanted to capture what the kids were taking away from our education session and get this information out of the classroom and into homes’.  

After the postcard was taken home, one whānau, for whom English is a second language, approached a Firefighter to tell them it prompted them to change their smoke alarm battery. Ka rawe! (Excellent!)