S.O.C.K (Save Our Country Kids) Week - Narembeen CRC
SOCK stands for ‘Save Our Country Kids’ and is a road safety initiative created by the Narembeen CRC.
It is a week long campaign of education on road safety and the impact poor decision making can have within a small community. SOCK Week is held annually in the last week of June and facilitates a number of activities and events that are designed to be informative as well as engaging. Activities held during the week remember those community members who have been lost in road accidents, as well as raising awareness, promoting safe, legal and responsible road use across several road safety messages, and is aimed at a broad cross-section of the community.
Some of the SOCK week activities conducted by the Shire in 2020 included:
- Creation of a dedicated webpage and suite of downloadable SOCK week resources & promotional materials
- The ‘Coffee Stop’ campaign with local businesses to give out SOCK branded reusable travel mugs to encourage travel breaks, swapping drivers and educating drivers about the warning signs of fatigue.
- A ‘Gopher Safety Talk’ followed by a morning tea for existing and potential future gopher drivers to share information about using local roads safely.
- ‘Wear a Road Safety Ribbon’ day saw local businesses handing out ribbons to customers to pin on their shirts and show their involvement in the SOCK campaign.
- A ‘Bike & Helmet Safety’ Day was conducted by SDERA at the local high school, involving students from Year 1 onwards.
- ‘Turn your headlights on’ for road safety day encouraged the community to keep headlights on during day time, to improve visibility and prevent crashes.
- ‘Fluro Friday’ encouraged community members and school kid to dress up in fluro and ‘be seen’. Surrounding towns also took part in this initiative and were ‘seen’ in photos all over social media.
- A candlelight gathering was held to remember the loved ones lost in road accidents, attended by first responders and the wider community. Candles were arranged to light up the word ‘SOCK’.
SOCK week enables strong and positive contributions for improvements in all four cornerstone areas of road safety; safe speeds, safe roads, safe road users and safe vehicles, with potential to reduce the risk of crashes.
The Shire of Narembeen and the Narembeen CRC welcome other communities touched by road accidents in their communities to come on board and implement SOCK Week in their communities. If your community would like to participate in SOCK Week, you can download the resources from the Shire of Narembeen website to display and share within your community, using the #SaveOurCountryKids hashtag.
