Company Announcement - After another highly successful year, the Engen Klevakidz campaign took paraffin safety to 99 schools, reaching 30 000 learners in 2014, the company announced this week. Kicking off in the Northern Cape in May, Klevakidz ran for a month before migrating to rural Limpopo, visiting 40 schools in all. A second phase started in the Eastern Cape in July,  visiting 59 predominantly rural schools by the end of August.

Since its inception in 2008, the campaign has reached 110 000 learners in 349 schools, said Tasneem Sulaiman-Bray, Engen’s General Manager: Corporate Affairs.

Klevakidz low-down
The Klevakidz initiative delivers an empowering message about safe handling and storage of paraffin, as well as what to do in an emergency, said Sulaiman-Bray. The concept uses industrial theatre to communicate the message. Aimed at young children, Klevakidz travels annually to poor and rural areas where the use of paraffin is widespread and accidents are common.
“Over the years we have learnt that increasingly younger children are given the primary daytime responsibility of caring for households. It is with this in mind that we target primary school learners with the message of safety,” Sulaiman-Bray continued.

Engaged educators
With its growing success, not least because it dovetails with paraffin safety messaging in the life skills curricula, the campaign has attracted more engagement and support from educators over time. “Positive and insightful feedback led to several amendments in the 2014 drive,” said Sulaiman-Bray. One of these is the decision to lower the age of children targeted, from 9 to 13 in previous years down to 7 to 11. “Educators stressed the importance of exposing foundation phase learners to the programme,” she said. In addition, a larger sample group of learners (240 children) were assessed before and after exposure to the production, to get findings of greater statistical significance about children’s prior knowledge and subsequent retention of paraffin safety facts. Lastly, gender and age-representative sampling was also introduced in 2014.

Praise
Campaign personnel reported that school principals praised Klevakidz’s “interactive, energetic and entertaining way of taking education out of the classroom”.
Representatives felt that the entire show was eagerly accepted, the messages and techniques were valuable, and that Engen is to be praised for taking responsibility in underprivileged and rural communities.
“As a leading provider of petroleum products in South Africa, we take this to heart and are honoured to contribute to the livelihoods and safety of people”, concluded Sulaiman-Bray.