Irene !hoaës
27 October 2008
Windhoek — The Motor Vehicle and Accident Fund last week commissioned the Secondary Schools Road Safety Choir.
The Xupifa Eemwenyo 2007 road safety project yielded many road safety initiatives geared at saving lives.
The objective of the Road Safety Choir is to influence positive road user behaviour amongst road users by "singing positive road safety messages into the minds of the people".
According to the partners involved in the initiative during this period, the fatality rate decreased significantly, by more than 20 percent.
Based on the success of this initiative, the MVA Fund together with its partners, the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), Inwent and Shell Namibia saw the need to expand this project by targeting the youth, as they are the future road users.
This year, the Schools Road Safety Song and Choir Competition will be launched with the aim of increasing road safety awareness amongst secondary school learners; to complement efforts towards the inclusion of road safety into the Namibian school curriculum and to create awareness on road safety in all 13 regions amongst young road users.
In the first round, secondary schools will compete on regional level in all 13 regions of the country. Participating schools will enter the competition by singing the road safety song from the Road Safety Choir as well as an additional song which is self composed in the categories of Afro-Pop, R&B or cultural, contemporary choral music. A total of 13 regional winners will then go through to the second round of the competition.
In the second round, the 13 regional winners will compete against each other and the public will then vote via sms for the school that they want to go through to the final round. The region with the highest number of public votes will ultimately go through to the final round.
The top four schools that receive the highest votes will then compete against each other in the grand finale, where a panel of judges will choose the overall winner.
The MVA Road Safety Choir initiative started last year with choirs around Windhoek composing two songs for the initiative.
The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Vitalis Ankama, launched the logo of the Road Safety Competition.
Ankama commended the MVA and its partners for the initiative, saying that music has become entrenched in people's lives, especially children, thus the objective will be successful.
"People should not only enjoy the melody but should also listen to the message," Ankama advised.
Ankama said school children are especially vulnerable as they travel to different destinations during the festive season.
He also lauded the MVA and partners for including schools in the road safety initiative, adding that his ministry has lost a lot of employees due to road accidents.
Shell Namibia at the occasion donated N$100 000 towards the initiative, the GTZ pledged N$230 000, while InWent, a non-profit organization, gave N$39 000 towards the initiative.
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