BURRILLVILLE – This week’s Sunday cartoon for kids, “Hear the “Beeps,” Drop Low and Go!” is part of the Home Safe Home series, focused on holiday and winter season themed home fire safety and burn prevention. These coloring cartoons are being utilized by fire departments here in New England and across the US this year in an effort to try and keep kids and families safer in their homes and apartments.
October is traditionally fire safety month, and a lot of effort is put into keeping kids and families safer by fire departments and fire safety officers. The NFPA does a great job providing fire departments with fire safety materials during the month of October and that is very commendable.
A lot of fire departments are also utilizing these particular holiday and seasonal fire safety and burn prevention coloring campaigns as another vehicle that compliments what is already available to them, because fire safety and burn prevention does not end the last week of October. Home and apartment fire safety and burn prevention is a yearlong outreach effort, and the holidays, along with winter season months, are the deadliest months of the years for fires.
The Fearless Dino Protector Squad Firefighting Cartoon Characters feature multiple fire safety and burn prevention themed strategies that are creatively applicable to many aspects of home and apartment fire safety and burn prevention educational and awareness platforms throughout the entire year. It’s not a singular yearlong fire safety message campaign. The Fearless Dino Protector Squad have many focus weeks, monthly and seasonal, along with holidays, creative fire safety and burn prevention community outreach platforms and formats that help prevent unintentional injuries and potentially saves lives.
A PREVCON Event, hosted by Safe Kids USA and held in Baltimore, Md., prior to the Covid virus, showed me just how important my continuous efforts are with Safe Kids USA coalitions across America. Not only does my content and popular cartoon characters help keep kids safer, they are also helping kids deal with their own fire experiences and losses. Safe Kids USA Coalition directors and staff visited my booth non-stop for three straight days thanking me and telling me about the success they are having with my creations, safety themes, cartoon characters and artwork with kids everywhere. They partner with police officers, firefighters, child safety advocates, schools, libraries, daycares and pediatric doctors and nurses by using these creative campaigns to help try and keep kids safer.
Kids absolutely love these cartoon characters and safety coloring formats. Educators also enjoy educating kids with these creative child safety materials. The Home Safe Home campaign is another one of those creative fire safety and burn prevention campaign outreach efforts. Safety concerns are important on a daily basis, not just one nationwide focus week or month out of the year. Safety should happen every single day.
Jim Weicherding is a Burrillville resident, and the founder and creator of an award-winning traffic safety effort Seasons of Safety. Weicherding contributes kids’ coloring cartoons, which can be printed and used to help parents discuss safety issues with their children. He has a long list of police officers and firefighters in his family and has worked with law enforcement and firefighters in a creative public safety capacity for more than two decades. Jim was recently appointed to Children Across America as their events and creative director for their child safety programs initiatives and outreach kids safety campaigns nationwide.
