Safe Steps makes great strides in safety promotion

To plant seeds of proper safety behavior today, to build more resilient communities in the future.

That, essentially, is the mission of Prudence Foundation, the community investment arm of insurance firm Prudential Corp. Asia, through Safe Steps Kids, a new multiplatform public-service program on safety awareness developed by the foundation in partnership with Cartoon Network, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and Philippine Red Cross.

The program aims to equip children across the country with actionable information designed to save lives in the event of emergencies or disaster situations.

It is a kid-centric version of Safe Steps, launched five years with Manny Pacquiao as ambassador.

To fully engage their audience for Safe Steps Kids, the Prudence Foundation chose, this time, ambassadors whom kids could easily relate to: the crime-fighting Powerpuff Girls, the adorable brothers from “We Bare Bears,” and fun-loving Gumball from “The Amazing World of Gumball.”

“The Philippines is one of the countries in Asia most prone to natural disasters. What this program aims to achieve is to equip the most vulnerable group of our community with information on how to stay safe and react to emergencies, hence helping to build a more resilient future generation,” Prudence Foundation executive director Marc-xavier Fancy said at Safe Steps Kids’ recent launch in Manila Ocean Park.

A series of 12 50-second public service announcements, divided into three categories, will be rolled out for the program.

Each video features a set of characters from the three aforementioned Cartoon Network series—some of the most popular here in the Philippines—which will anchor the storytelling process to raise awareness and provide educational information.

The first category of videos, which have been on air since May, is disasters, featuring superhero trio The Powerpuff Girls.

These videos cover survival techniques in four types of disasters: fire, flood, typhoon and earthquake.

Beginning August this year, the first aid episodes will be rolled out, featuring “We Bare Bears.”

These will demonstrate what to do in the event that someone is choking, has broken bones or burns, and is wounded or severely bleeding.

The last set of videos will be about road safety, featuring characters from “The Amazing World of Gumball,” who will tackle topics such as proper wearing of seatbelt and helmet, giving way to pedestrians, and the perils of distracted driving.

“We’re trying to give them the values now, so that when they do become the ones, say, driving cars, they’ve got the right behavior,” Fancy said.

The program’s success, however, won’t just depend on the cartoons, Fancy added, but on Prudence Foundation’s partners for the initiative.

“Once the Red Cross, the schools put up the posters, they’re there forever. Once you put up a video on YouTube, it’s there forever, so while our commitment of promoting this is at least two years, for sure, the longevity of the information, we hope, stays forever,” Fancy said. “Everything is available for free on [the website]—the videos, the posters, they can all be downloaded—so it’s not just dependent on us. People can use it forever.”