Many Safety Organizing groups consider safety campaigns essential for raising the level of safety awareness in people. Are you ready to take that essential step towards improving your safety track record?

But how do you go about organizing a safety campaign?

Putting together a successful safety campaign takes organizing skills and a commitment to seeing things through. But even before you organize a safety campaign, you must be clear on a few things:

Why You are Organizing a Safety Campaign

There must be a reason for organizing a safety campaign, otherwise the efforts and money put into it might be wasted. From your collected data, has any particular field been identified as problematic? Or was it to comply to a new regulation that is coming into effect? And who are your target group for the campaign?

In one safety campaign conducted recently, the organization doing it felt that something drastic needed to be done to raise the awareness levels in their staff after noting three fatal incidents happening in their area within the last two months.

Your Goals and Objective

A safety campaign will not last forever. Even before you start, you must be able to know if you have achieved what you set up to achieve. Your goals must be clearly spelt out somewhere. You may have one objective or a few. You might also want to emphasize on behaviors like "be considerate", "be safe", "be aware".

Your goals and objective might not be immediately apparent, but by setting up some sort of measurement data and tracking them over a period of time, you will be able to gauge the success of the campaign.

Who are Involved

List down all those involved - the main players, the supporting players, the other resources like press, photographers, graphic artists, film crew.

Establishment of a Campaign Committee

The campaign committee must comprise all the interested parties and the supporting players that have roles to play.

The campaign committee will meet to agree on the following key decisions and carry through on the commitments as follows:

1. Choosing a time-frame.
2. Deciding how long it will run.
3. Setting the timetable.
4. Finding money and supplies.
5. Recognizing volunteers, safety officers and sponsors.
6. Evaluating the results.
7. Planning future campaigns.
8. Choosing campaign messages or slogans.

Each campaign will contain a number of elements. Some may have only a few, while others include a wide variety of elements catering for a few projects. For example, if you are doing a road safety campaign, you may have a project focusing on driving safety and another on pedestrian safety and yet another on the wearing of helmets for motorcyclists. That's why you must be clear on your goals and objectives.

Below are some of the elements of a campaign that might be considered:

• Creating displays for awareness. Collect all the information, statistics and answers to questions that the public might want to know. Graphic artists will be helpful for setting up interesting and eye-catching crowd-pulling displays.
• Rewards for good safety practices. It will be very effective to put a message on safety on the reward gift itself. In this way, the message stays fresh in the memory even after the campaign is long over.
• Making it easier or cheaper to carry out what you are promoting. For example, if you are promoting the wearing of helmets, the prices of each of them might be sold at a reduced price, or even given away for free during the campaign.
• Making direct contacts with those involved in the field. Schedule a period of meeting the people to talk about the safety concerns. If the media can be arranged during this time, it will provide much publicity and reach for your campaign.
• Making presentations to interested parties. Keep giving information to your targeted audience.
• Demonstrations by experts. Industrial experts have the authority that adds up credibility in support for your campaign. They could also be a source of attraction for your campaign.
• Getting media support to spread the news, the messages and the publicity to reach to a wider audience so that more people will benefit from what you have prepared.
• Distributing promotional materials, gifts, souvenirs. Be creative with regards to this. Colorful and unique fun designs will definitely be appreciated more than those easily obtained from the nearby stores.