Egypt - An educational campaign for road safety

• Educate school children on road safety;
• Address drivers' attitude issues to raise awareness on the reasons for car accidents;
• Prepare qualified future drivers.

Lafarge Egypt has emphasized the need for a long term road safety strategy in a country that suffers from car accidents by launching a road safety educational campaign targeting school children.

The road safety campaign was launched in 2 phases:

• The first phase consisted in the creation of a daily TV cartoon series under the name of "Essam & Genie". The program dedicated one minute to illustrate different road safety tips, explaining the dangers and raising awareness on the basics of road safety - mainly good manners on the road - in order to start shaping the right attitude. The TV spot was aired daily on the key TV channels on prime time during the holy month of Ramadan.
• The second part of the campaign relied on the launch of a project in partnership with a local NGO (the Egyptian Association for Roads Traffic Victims - EARTV) aimed at raising awareness on road safety among students of elementary schools in Egypt.

  The TV cartoon has been used in the school campaign to capitalize on its popularity and success.

The project has so far qualified 300 teachers for raising awareness of 3,000 students in 26 schools in Cairo and Alexandria. A number of workshops have already been conducted to educate children on traffic rules, ethics and regulations.

The cartoon series was a success, recording high audience ratings. Fans of the key cartoon character started to create groups on Facebook as a reaction to the story presented. 

In recognition to this campaign, the National Center for Culture and Innovation, a subsidiary of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, recognized the Lafarge series "Essam & Genie" as the best cartoon idea for 2011.
Lafarge is now standing as the sponsor of Road Safety in Egypt.

Based on the success of the cartoon series, another campaign has been developed with the Ministry of Education to share road safety with school children.

• Lafarge Egypt;
• School children between 6 to 10 years old;
• Ministry of Education.