How one school got a 4,000 Euro grant to get kids to walk
A primary school in Great Britain has found a solution to fix the mobility problems parents face when they drop their kids at school every morning. Every day there are quite a number of traffic jams at school doors and this not only usually make the kids late but it also generates pollution of vehicles idling and nervous parents which have to then get to their respective jobs. Toyota of Europe sponsored a contest aimed at reducing traffic at schools. The "Stamp Stanley – Walk to Millfield" project won with a simple, not-exactly-new idea: make the children walk to the school. The twist was the creation of a reward system wherby students collect stamps on their way to the school. That's something they can't do when riding on cars (or worse, SUVs or huge minivans). Millfield installed permanent checkpoint machines along school routes, from which students can collect those stamps and redeem them for prizes.
This simple measure increased walking children to school up to 80 percent, which in turn significantly decreased the number of cars (and nervous parents) at the school doors.
The school was awarded a grant of 4,000 EUR for winning the contest. 100 other schools in several European countries have got additional grants for participating in the project as well.
[Source: Toyota]
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