Hanoi, March 6th, 2010, today, the big festival for primary pupils named “National Traffic Safety exchange for primary students in the school year 2009- 2010” which will be free-entry organized in two days the 6th and 7th March, 2010 in A3 hall, Giang Vo Exhibition centre, Hanoi. This is one of the Toyota Traffic Safety Education Program’s (TSEP) activities that have been held annually

Attending the “National Traffic Safety Contest for primary student in the school year 2009-2010” are 15 excellent teams coming from 15 provinces and cities nationwide including Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Tay Ninh, Can Tho, Dong Thap, Dak Nong, Binh Duong, Thua Thien-Hue, Quang Binh, Thai Binh, Hung Yen, Ninh Binh, Bac Gian, Thai Nguyen and Vinh Phuc. These teams have been selected from “Local Traffic Safety Contest for primary student in school year 2009-2010” which has been successfully organized at the end of 2009; and the cities and provinces had held Local Traffic Safety Contest as well as good implementation traffic safety education and socialization.

4,000 students are expected to join “National Traffic Safety Contest for primary student in school year 2009-2010”. The program consists of the following activities: traffic safety knowledge (theory and practice); drawing picture; composing poetry and music performance. Via these activities, students will initiatively study information and necessary skill about traffic safety.

“National Traffic Safety Contest for Primary Student in school year 2009-2010” will be implemented with more innovative content year-on-year. Highly practical questions will help student be more flexible with traffic situations as well as team working skill and awareness to obey traffic rules.

Besides the competition, interesting games related to traffic safety and exchange activities will be organized in parallel divided in 2 areas Magic City and Fairy Village. Games in Magic City are problems of traffic safety in cities like traffic jam, red light passing, joining traffic without helmets, going on pavements, etc. In the Fairy village sector, games about traffic problems in Vietnam countryside like buffalo guide, carrying rice, marketing in roads, drying straw after harvesting and so on. Chareacteristics of Fairy Village are Tam & Cam, Seven Dwarfs, turtle, puppy, buffalo and tiger, etc. When winning in games areas, they will be awarded with stars to exchange with correlative gift.

Especially, two new characters of National Traffic Safety Contest: Kanto turtle and Caro rabbit will be companions who will guide children to games. Via characters from children’s favorite films and stories, the message of the program will be sent to primary pupils in a friendly way with children’s world.

ACHIVEMENT OF TSEP AFTER NEARLY 5 YEARS OF IMPLEMENTATION:

As one of four significant educational activities of Toyota Vietnam Fund (TFV), the program “Toyota Traffic Safety Education Program” (TSEP) together with education have successfully implemented the education of traffic safety for elementary students for 5 years. The program has provided more than 7.5 million traffic safety educating publications for the entire first graders during the past five academic years since 2005, freely distributing more than 82.000 VDCs, 82.000 guide books of teaching traffic safety for elementary teachers, successfully organizing 32 seminars about traffic safety for nearly 5000 key managers and teachers from many primary schools throughout the nation. Besides, TSEP also successfully held 20 provincial contests to study about traffic safety with nearly 10,000 students and 3 national contests with the participation of 7000 elementary students throughout the nation. For the past 2 academic years since 2007, ten provinces have taken over activities of hand puppets and performing them in nearly 700 primary schools with the participation of 427,000 primary students.

Especially in this year, within the corporation of TSEP program, 1,500,000 books named “Turtle and Rabbit study Traffic Safety” and new materials of TSEP program which will have 2 beloved cartoon characters: Karoo rabbit and Canta turtle will be freely distributed to primary students throughout the nation. The content of this book has been improved and be very easy to understand and remember, interesting and highly practical. The form of the book will be shown like a picture book. The content shows natural condition and geography of different regions with typical traffic safety situations and suitable solutions each, which contributes to raise the feasibility and practice of the new book. The book includes eight lessons with different traffic situations in plains, high lands and river regions.

In the next few years, TSEP program will be continued to implement with lots of new forms and contents together with promoting deeply socialized activities in each regions.

It can be said that the greatest success of TSEP is to receive enthusiastic responses from students as well as parents, the high evaluation of the Ministry of Education and Training and teachers. Then, the Ministry of Education and Training has guided to include the TSEP materials into the general programs about traffic safety education that is being deployed in primary schools in the whole country. With these contribution, TMV has received 2-continuous-year Merit Certificate of Education from the Ministry of Education and Training for positive contribution of TMV to traffic safety education for elementary students in particular and for Vietnamese Education in general.

Mr Le Tien Thanh - Director of Primary Education Department (MOET) said: “We highly evaluate the contribution of Toyota Vietnam Foundation (TVF) for traffic safety ecucation. From the boring contents of traffic safety education, through activities of TSEP program and especially this Contest with understandable contests, useful games and suitable ages, TVF helps primary students apply knowledge when joining traffic on streets. Especially, these interesting picture books have created an effective training method to students to get access to the content of traffic safety in a natural and gentle way, which is suitable for current training method.”

Addressing at the ceremony, Mr. Akito Tachibana, Director of TVF, President of Toyota Motor Vietnam said that “Successful organizing this program is not only the effort of TVF, the support of the Department of Elementary Education- the Ministry of Education and Training together with National Traffic Safety Committee but also the support from teachers and primary students. We believe that students will be more and more eager for studying traffic safety and raise awareness when joining traffic. This is the biggest encouragement for us to continue supporting and developing TSEP program."

Reference information:

1. Traffic Safety Education Program (TSEP)

The Traffic Safety Education Program (TSEP) is one of four key programs in the framework of the Toyota Vietnam Foundation (TVF) founded by Toyota Motor Vietnam (TMV) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education& Training and the National Traffic Safety Committee since 2005-2006 school year.

TSEP aims at educating the traffic safety awareness for primary pupils in all schools nationwide. Applying the spirit of “learning for fun and fun to learn”, TSEP has provided new teaching methods with interesting syllabuses as well as helpful extracurricular activities. In this way, traffic safety learning becomes more attractive and interesting to the pupils.

There are four main activities in TSEP program:

- Providing teacher manual and teaching equipment of traffic safety for teachers and pupils in all primary schools.
- Performing traffic safety role-plays at primary schools.
- Organizing traffic safety seminars for primary teachers and education officers.
- Propagandizing and Introducing TSEP program in mass media in order to bring a wider and deeper social effect

Beside that, socialization activities for the program are promoted: enlarge passing puppet showing in local, organizing provincial traffic safety contest, national traffic safety contest…

2. Provincial traffic safety contest for primary student in 2009-2010:

On the wide socialization way, in order to create a funny and useful playground for pupils, in last two months of 2009, local traffic safety contest was held by Toyota Vietnam Foundation in collaboration with Ministry of Education and Training in 6 provinces, including: Vinh Phuc, Hung Yen, Bac Giang, Quang Binh, Dac Nong and Can Tho.

In the second year of organization, the contest is one of practical activities to socialize and enhance the role of local education authority in traffic safety training activity for pupils. This is also a meaningful playground with “study for fun and fun for study” method to help the pupils take form the basic skill about traffic safety as well as strengthen knowledge of traffic safety and promote the positive initiative in learning traffic safety rules.

The contest is divided into two rounds with four major contents:

o Traffic safety rule contest
o Role play performance contest
o Drawing contest
o Good teachers contest

This year, it attracted the attendance of more than 600 students and over 60 teachers in 6 local contests. Thereby, the excellent items are selected to national traffic safety contest which will be held in 6-7 Mar 2010.

3. Toyota Vietnam Foundation TVF:

Toyota Vietnam Foundation (TVF) was established in October 2005 by Toyota Motor Vietnam, Ministry of Education and Training and the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism with capital of USD 4 million (sponsored by TMV). TVF focuses on community’s activities to develop social culture, especially developing quality of education and training and human resource in Vietnam, including four main activities:

- “Monozukuri course” – Know-how of success in manufacturing and business to share the key experiences of mastering the successes of Toyota

- “Traffic Safety Education Program” to raise the awareness of traffic safety manner for nearly 5 million of 1st grade pupils in primary schools for 3 continuous school- years (2005 - 2009)

- “Toyota Concert” to help Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra upgrade to international level

- “Toyota Scholarship” for excellent students in universities of technology nationwide. From 2009, this program has been expanded to music students in musical training schools under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

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