Youngsville High School receives a $2,000 Project Ignition grant for Safe Teen Driving Campaign
Youngsville, PA, April 11, 2012 - Students from Youngsville High School were presented with a $2000 Project Ignition grant from State Farm® representatives today during the school’s Poetry Slam. The event which allows students in grades 9-12 to enter a poem or piece of artwork focuses on awareness to distracted driving issues faced by young drivers. The Poetry Slam is an extension of the school’s Project Ignition 10 and 2 How About You campaign funded through State Farm and the National Youth Leadership Council’s Project Ignition program. This is the third year Youngsville High School has been named a Top 25 winner.
10 and 2, How About You allows Youngsville High School leaders to provide activities to help students understand that distracted driving is life threatening. The Project Ignition (PI) team connects activities to curriculum by writing letters to representatives to make texting and distracted driving laws stricter, conducting plays in the Head Start program about safety, researching health facts on how the distracted mind works and in communicating information and resources for safe driving. The team also held assemblies, workshops, and the this year’s poetry contest, to look at how the different distractions affect the mind, to see how impaired people's reaction times are affected, and to understand the history of Pennsylvania's laws around driving and driver's safety. This includes the state’s new texting law ban.
Project Ignition, a service-learning competition launched in 2004, is designed to help teens spread their own words of driver safety and win grant money for their schools. Chosen from applicants nationwide, the ten best campaigns of the twenty five will have the opportunity to receive additional funding to support their participation in a national conference or event and go deeper with their campaigns during the 2012-2013 school year. Project Ignition is a grant program that utilizes service-learning to address teen driver safety issues through student-led campaigns. — but the ripple effect the program creates is anything but simple.
Student teams find their inspiration close to home — sometimes from personal tragedy — but their powerful messages reach across towns, counties, and state lines. Students find amazing and creative ways to bring their messages to life:
“As the nation’s No. 1 insurer of vehicles, State Farm makes it a priority to promote teen driver safety through programs like Project Ignition,” says Jim Corley, State Farm Agency Field Executive in Erie, PA. “We believe in the power of young people to make a difference and are happy to join them in promoting teen driver safety.”
Teen drivers (ages 16 to 19) have fatal crashes at four times the rate of adult drivers (ages 25 to 69). State Farm has long been a proponent of education, research and legislation that helps to keep drivers, passengers and pedestrians safe. Working with The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia™ on the Young Driver Research Initiative, and partners like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the National Youth Leadership Council, Governors Highways Safety Association, the country’s leading auto insurer takes a comprehensive approach to teen safety that includes strong laws, enforcement and education.
On Monday, a new State Farm® survey conducted in February 2012 by Harris Interactive, was released showing the majority of teens with driver's licenses, 57 percent, admit to texting while driving, despite the widespread attention surrounding the dangers of this risky practice. The study also found that fewer teens view texting as less likely to lead to a fatal accident versus drinking and driving and that parents with teens with driver permits see a sharp decline in safe driving talks once their teen gets a license. However, the first year of driving also brings the highest lifetime crash risk.
For more information on the Project Ignition program, please visit the ProjectIgnition website at http://sfprojectignition.com to learn what other schools are doing to promote safe teen driving in their communities and to be a part of PI Nation.
Contact
Dave Phillips, Media Inquiries, (610) 358-7667
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