Farm Safety Days
The SAASE Provincial Safety Day program began in 2012. Since then SAASE’s Agricultural Societies are hosting over 15 safety days a year, with over 5,500 students attending from schools across Saskatchewan. In 2015 over 500 volunteers – donating over 4,000 hours of their time worked on safety days to teach our children about safety. Since the program was set up, SAASE has been able to develop partnerships which include – Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, Community Initiatives Fund (CIF), the Progressive Agriculture Foundation, the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association (CASA), SaskPower, Farm Credit Canada, the Saskatchewan Safety Council, and the Prairie South School Division. When the program was initially set up the following was developed as the overall project goal and objectives:
Program Goal
To reduce the number of farm/agriculturally related injuries and/or deaths.
Program Objectives
- To increase awareness of rural family health and safety issues through education.
- To increase access to a variety of rural safety materials and resources.
- To create a long lasting, sustainable project which will be maintained by the community.
- To increase the exposure and visibility of Agricultural Societes and the Ministry of Agriculture in various communities and regions throughout the province.
- To develop a network of safety day coordinators around Saskatchewan ensuring the best safety days with the best resources available are being offered to children across Saskatchewan.
- To develop partnerships with community groups, business and nonprofit groups to promote safety days in communities across Saskatchewan.
In working with the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association (CASA) and the Progressive Agriculture Foundation, SAASE and the Agricultural Societies hosting the Farm Safety Days are able to access the very latest in Safety Day resources. In addition to outstanding resources CASA and Progressive Agriculture supply training to the people who will be working and coordinating the Safety Days. Every fall SAASE in partnership with CASA and Progressive Ag host a safety day coordinators workshop in Regina. Since 2012 the Saskatchewan Coordinators training has become one of the largest in Canada. These trainings are developing a tremendous network of highly qualified Farm Safety Coordinators across the province. The network being developed will not only strengthen the Farm Safety program today, but also make it much stronger in the future.
Going forward SAASE will continue to develop other partnerships for the safety day program to ensure that the program continues to grow and continues to teach our children how to be safe.