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Local street-proofing program hits international stage
Tuesday September 2 2008
By RICHARD VIVIAN Banner Staff Writer
 
A made-in-Dufferin street-proofing program is going global. Mulmur’s Sue Snider, executive director of Safe Communities of the Hill Country, has been invited to present the program at the upcoming International Safe Communities conference in New Zealand.
“I think its great because you get to share what we do with kids everywhere. You make one child safer, that is something money can’t buy,” she tells The Banner.
“It doesn’t cost money to share information and it can protect children.”
The conference, which runs Oct. 20 to 23, will see the gathering of like-minded safety and injury prevention professionals from throughout the world.
This will be Snider’s second time presenting the street-proofing program on the international stage. She says she introduced it to the World Health Organization during a conference in 2004.
“It’s growing all the time, because you see different things happening in the world and parents react different ways to what they see as being different abductions,” Snider explains. “I’m thrilled to be invited back to present it in New Zealand.”
In essence, Snider says the program teaches children what they need to know to be safe on the streets, while not being terrified of everybody as a potential abductor.
“You have to give kids a really good sense of who safe people are. We don’t talk to children about strangers anymore,” she says, explaining a child’s concept of who’s a stranger is different than an adult’s.
For instance, Snider says a child may feel someone who had a casual conversation with their parent is no longer a stranger, even though they don’t know much about them.
“A lot of times people just don’t know how to teach their kids,” she says, suggesting the “bad man” is often used as a threat for bad behaviour.
“The scare tactic doesn’t work as well because then every time the child sees someone they perceive it as being somebody who’s going to take them. That’s not empowering our children — you’re making them into a scaredy-cat society instead of being a secure and safe society.”
Snider, who is also vice-president of Child Find Canada, delivers the program through the local Early Years Centres and makes presentations to various school and community groups.