OLE trains 7 new railway safety presenters

OLE carries out its educational programme, which means communicating railway safety messages mostly through volunteer presenters. The presenters visit schools and various events and tell about safe behaviour and railway related dangers. All the presenters have been trained at two-day courses that gave them knowledge about railway safety and presentation skills.

Another training for OLE’s volunteer presenters was organised on April 10-11, 2013 in Villa Theresia in Rakvere. The course had 7 participants, all of them working as youth police officers in the Estonian Police and Border Guard Board. From the Southern prefecture were participating Triinu Kabel and Kersti Raiküla, from the Western Prefecture Eve Sirel and Kristel Kesküla, and from the Eastern Prefecture were attending Liivi Maalman, Andrei Aleksejev and Maksim Sharabanov. A part of the youth police officers’ work is talking to young people about various topics and OLE is happy to see that the police officers are ready to distribute also the information on railway safety. Several of the participants admitted that while coming to the training they could not imagine how to spend 45 minutes talking in a school about railway safety. By the end of the second day many of them thought that this time could be even too short. The participants also said that the training days were intense but they were really satisfied with everything offered. The training gave them certainty and detailed knowledge about railway safety issues and hopefully it will not be long until all of them hold their first railway safety presentation.

In recent years, OLE has succeeded in establishing excellent cooperation relations particularly with the police officers dealing with youth issues. In addition to the presentations organised in schools, we cooperate during the KEAT (Protect yourself and help the others) project and police officers have participated also organising other railway safety activities. Due to the arrival of the new and quieter trains, our common efforts for informing the general public about the dangers present on railways become even more important.

This was already the tenth OLE’s presenters’ training. During 9 years OLE has trained 70 railway safety presenters.