NANBA Town, XUANHAN County, China - September 23, 2019

AIP Foundation China wrapped up a successful 2018-2019 school year of Walk Wise programming with a teacher training workshop in Nanba Town, Xuanhan County.

The Walk Wise program aims to improve the safety of road users through community education, school-based road safety education, road safety treatments, and capacity-building measures, and has been implemented in Nanba Town since 2017.

Teachers and safety directors from each of the 17 Walk Wise program schools across the county were invited to attend, in addition to representatives from two potential future program schools for the upcoming 2019-2020 school year of the Walk Wise program.

Over 30 school representatives attended the training workshop to discuss Walk Wise evaluation results and learn about positive discipline methods to improve their teaching skills and attitudes.

AIP Foundation China recruited an experienced expert in “positive discipline” from Chengdu, Sichuan Province to support the teacher training.

Participants learned about the concept, tools, and methods of teaching through positive discipline and played games which promoted their understanding of the teaching method. Positive discipline is a model used by schools to promote positive behaviors among students through positive reinforcement.

A representative from the Department of Education commended the positive discipline approach and expressed support of its application in education.

During the training workshop, AIP Foundation China Country Manager, Xiaoyan Xu, and Project Coordinator, Youde Tang, discussed evaluation results and plans for the upcoming 2019-2020 school year. The impact of Walk Wise on the target communities has been significant: in a post program survey conducted in 2019 in Xuanhan County with 316 students, the percentage of primary students who always wear a helmet when riding motorcycles or electronic bicycle increased from 29.9% to 53.3%. For 222 drivers transporting primary school students on their motorcycles or electric bicycle, this figure increased from 34.7% to 57.3%.

Since the launch of Walk Wise in 2017, the program has directly benefited a total of 25,559 students, 422 teachers, and 32,335 parents and community members across 17 program schools in Nanba Town.