The students involved in Hugh B. Bain Middle School's Project Respect, under the direction of school social worker Sheri Brown, hosted a Community Safety Day at the school recently. The day was planned in conjunction with the Cranston Substance Abuse Task Force and all of the elementary schools that feed into Bain were invited to send their third and fourth grade students to the event.

Approximately 500 students from Stadium, Arlington, Woodridge, Gladstone and Peters elementary schools were present for the event, held in the Bain auditorium. Besides Brown and her students, Principal Tom Barbieri, School Resource Officer Kevin Denneny and Cranston's Substance Abuse Task Force representative Dana DeVerna were all present as well.

"We give money to support Project Respect every year, and some of that money goes towards presentations like this," said DeVerna.

According to Brown, the goal of the presentation was to have the Project Respect students speak to and teach the elementary students safety topics such as bike and scooter safety, stranger danger, helmet safety and walking/riding safety. Additionally, the event was held prior to the Cranston Family Safety Day, being held the following week, in the hopes of promoting that event.

"The whole point of Project Respect is peer education," said Brown in her opening remarks to the elementary students. "The students from Bain will be teaching all of you, especially as we head into summer."

In their presentation, which the Project Respect students began preparing in the fall, they used audience participation, games, skits, DVD slideshows and short films to keep the elementary students engaged while emphasizing the importance of the safety topics being presented. The games included a "Family Feud" spoof as well as an "Are You Smarter Than a Third or Fourth Grader" game.

During the helmet safety portion of the show, the students discussed some of the shocking statistics surrounding brain injuries in young students that result from not wearing helmets. They reported that helmets provide an almost 90 percent effective rate in protecting the brain, when worn correctly, and approximately 630 bicyclists died on roads in the United States last year, with 74 of them being 14 years old or younger.

With many of the students in the Bain community living in an area with a lot of foot traffic, the topic of stranger danger was also an important one. The Project Respect students quizzed the younger students, presenting several different scenarios to them, and asking them what they thought they'd do, if for example, a car pulled over and asked them for directions while walking home from school one day. They encouraged the students to use the "buddy system" and walk in pairs or groups for safety and to never talk to a stranger, even if the person says they are a friend of the family.

At the end of the presentation, the school resource officers, Sgt. Kevin Denneny and Sgt. Matt Kite, gave away six bike helmets as prizes and helped to fit them on the students who won them. Additional prizes were given out including backpacks, water bottles, armbands and reflectors, all used to keep the students safe.