Limerick School takes the crown as Agri Aware National Farm Safe Schools Class Champions 2022.
Fifth and Sixth Class pupils in Athlacca National School, Kilmallock, Co. Limerick have been crowned the National Winners in the Class category of the Agri Aware Farm Safe School programme.
The school is celebrating after being crowned the Agri Aware Farm Safe Schools National Champions for 2022. A strong achievement given 19,500 school children from over 450 schools across the country signed up for the programme.
Eilis Greene from Agri Aware and Alma Jordan founder of AgriKids and Farm Safe Schools Co-ordinator with Agri Aware were on hand to present the prize to Athlacca National School.
Over the course of the programme, sponsored by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, schools engaged in a series of farm safety-themed modules, helping them to be ambassadors for farm safety and empower cultural change at home and within their communities.
The National winners in the class category from Athlacca embraced all sides of the project and created a Farm Safety wall in their school, designed key rings for tractors with farm safety tips for their community and also ran an ‘Eye on Safety’ project as part of their submission.
As a prize, the school will receive €500.00 to spend on the wellbeing of their students. St Joseph’s National School, Killenummery, Co Leitrim were the National Winners in the School category of the Agri Aware Farm Safe School programme, having taken Farm Safety as their theme in the local St. Patricks Day parade.
Speaking about the programme, Minister Martin Heydon TD said: “The Farm Safe Schools programme plays an important role in our efforts to improve farm safety. By engaging with children, some of whom will be tomorrow’s young farmers, this programme is an opportunity to ingrain a lifelong culture of safety in their approach to farming”.
“Through the Farm Safe Schools programme, we have been able to reach 19,500 pupils around the country in over 450 communities and they are now equipped to become champions for farm safety. This will make an important contribution in reducing the unacceptably high incidence rate of farm fatalities and serious injuries on Irish farms”
Farm Safe Schools Coordinator and AgriKids founder, Alma Jordan explained what made the winners stand out from the crowd.
“Our winners today have shown how capable they are by achieving superstar status but what led them to taking the top honours comes down to the way they took the information and disseminated it around their school and communities.
“Athlacca really engaged with the materials and then took the message to their community by creating tractor key rings with safety tips.
“It sends a very powerful message to adults when young children take on such a serious topic.
Identifying and creating awareness drives the impact we need to achieve in Farm Safe Schools, these national champions are a testament to that.
Agri Aware Executive Director, Marcus O’Halloran expressed his delight to the national winners.
“The Agri Aware Farm Safe Schools Programme is one of our most important as it aims to save lives by improving farm safety.
“The children are really bringing their learning home to their parents and grandparents. It is great to see the effort and imagination that goes into the annual submissions from the programme and the long-term benefits will be overall improved farm safety.”