MIND (YOUR) SAFETY ! SAFETY MATTERS- start of the project

Have you asked yourself- at least once- what are the qualifications and the competences of your safety trainer ?  Have you  ever asked the same thing- but regarding the teacher who learns you child about safety ?
We have year after year a lot of students ending their tuition and entering on the work market. Nobody is having an extensive care at the workplace about their safety. Of course that they are somehow trained- but if they are  missing the elementary notions regarding Occupational Safety and health- this training is building on no foundation .
How should be a safety teacher/formator for young peoples (second grade and up) ? What knowledge should he have ? What about the competences ? What are the best methods to teach safety ?

Is this a trivial problem ? No, for the victims and relatives of the victims of occupational accidents, for their colleagues, friends and co-workers. Yearly there are hundreds of  young workers caught in occupational accidents. We could multiply this number at least with 100 to understand the reality of workplace, including also the undeclared ones, the boy/girl that cut himself with a steel sheet and is not reporting (nobody told him that he/she should wear protective gloves and he is afraid on what is considering his/hers mistake).
In this respect, the project ”Mind safety. Safety matters” that is developing inside the ERASMUS + framework is  starting having as the main objective the improvement of the safety tuition for youngsters, mainly for those from the second grade up.
The coordinator of the project is ACT- the  competent authority in safety in Portugal. Three universities (the University of Aveiro, the Technical University of Delft and University of Girona) , two research institutes (INCDPM ”Alexandru Darabont”- The Romanian National Research Institute on Occupational Safety and our coleagues from Cehia) and one professional association AFTEBI are the members of the consortia.
Between 24-31 January, at the premises of the University of Aveiro the kick-off meeting and the preliminary training and discussions took place in a very warm and knowledge oriented environment. During this period we could listen a lot of interesting presentations, learn about the modern educational methods and develop some ideas for the future activity.

Some interesting presentations were ”CREATING AND SETTING UP THE MIND SAFETY SPACE IN SAPO CAMPUS”- held by mr. Luis Pedro from the Aveiro University, ”TEACHING EXPERIENCE AT S&H” held by professor Paul Swuste from TU Delft or ” OSH Educational BEST PRACTICES” held by mrs. Ana Paula Rosa from  ACT.
INCDPM was represented by mrs. Alina Trifu and Mr. Stefan Kovacs who held also a presentation with the title ”OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY – Basic concepts” on the third day.

It was a very nice meeting with positive results and developments. We hope that the development of the project would be a substantial step forward towards a better safety training and towards  reduction on unexpected events at the workplace.