KI students campaign to tackle drink driving
With their local football season right around the corner, a group of Kangaroo Island school students are taking the initiative to deliver an important message to their community ahead of the first siren.
In 2024, Kangaroo Island students banded together to launch their Drive Alive campaign – a student-developed drink driving initiative funded by Our Town SA.
Kangaroo Island Our Town facilitator Prisicilla Thomas said the project started in November 2023 when she attended a student voice agency and leadership program on Kangaroo Island, where a forum is run for students to present their ideas for tackling a community issue of their choice.
A group of year 10 students wanted to do something concerning road safety – proposing a billboard installation, like those they’d seen on the mainland.
After those students went on to study at the Kingscote Campus, the dream of the billboard idea was passed to a new group of girls similarly impassioned about prioritising road safety.
“I could see that this was something which could be done,” Thomas told InDaily.
The students received $50,000 of funding from the not-for-profit Our Town and a $10,000 Regional Safety Grant from the RAA to create a campaign and merchandise to raise awareness of the dangers of drink driving.
Thomas said the students’ “determination to do something around drink driving was palpable”.
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“They described their experiences explaining they would see adults play or attend sport, go to the bar, consume alcohol and then get in the car with the kids in the back. They just couldn’t stand by and watch anymore,” Thomas said.
The Drive Alive campaign team started with t-shirts because the girls liked the idea of becoming a “walking billboard”.
The campaign used all local businesses to print and distribute branded caps, stubby holders, banners and air fresheners to distribute to members of their community.
The students then directed a professional photoshoot to create a banner, harnessing local businesses for marketing, photography, make-up and graphic design expertise.
The students approached their banner with the winter sport season in mind.
The photoshoot stages a crash scene with the mother and father in the front of the vehicle with their daughters in the back. Each person is depicted in football and basketball jerseys with scattered medals and trophies, and the tagline “DON’T MAKE WINNING ONCE IN A LIFETIME!”
Thomas said the girls had full creative control, saying to them, “this needs to be about your voice, not what you think adults want to hear”.
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Thomas said the billboard’s association with sport is because “sport is very much a part of the culture, an essential part of rural community life”.
The Drive Alive campaign became a driving billboard when they displayed their banner on a trailer to make it easier to attract attention at sporting events.
“Everybody travels to the one ground and all the matches are held there, so the whole community is there,” Thomas said.
The mobile billboard will now be handed over to the Parndana Progress Association, who will take responsibility for getting it around not only to sporting events, but community events as well.
Year 9 student Chloe, one of the students who worked on Drive Alive, said that the severity of the campaign’s message was unapologetically necessary.
“The island has lots of troubles with drink driving, and we see it a lot. I feel as kids we have to have some safe way of getting home, and we had to target that problem,” Chloe told InDaily.
“They need to realise this issue affects not only them but their families and the whole community. It can affect innocent people – passengers in the car and other people like us on the road. If people say it’s too confronting, we know it (the campaign) is doing what it needs to do.”
The KI Locals Only Facebook page has seen multiple posts concerning the campaign, with overwhelmingly positive feedback for the students’ efforts.
One comment on the Drive Alive Facebook page wrote, “You girls are fantastic!! Good on you shining light on this problem. Booze is bad.”
Head of Parndana Campus, Alex Smith, told InDaily they’re seeing a systemic line of changes in how students are relating to activism.
“Kids now know that if they work at something and they continue to work at it they can actually make a change in the real world,” Smith said.
“They now are more aware that they have a voice, and they have power to do something about a problem that they perceive in their community, and they’re willing to give it a go.”
The students’ efforts have recently won them the Governor’s School Civics Award and Project of the Year at the Kangaroo Island Australia Day Awards.
Chloe and Thomas attended the ceremony where Mayor Michael Pengilly praised the campaign, calling it a “demonstration of the power of community spirit”.
