New Plymouth Constable Heather Patient and 24 Taranaki secondary school students were part of the energy and inspiration at this year's annual Students Against Dangerous Driving (SADD) Conference 2021.
Each year students from around New Zealand have the opportunity to attend the conference, and this year the North Island Conference was held at St Patrick’s College in Upper Hutt with 66 students attending.
Before Heather started working in Custody, she was part of the New Plymouth Impairment Prevention Team so road safety is a issue close to her heart.
"I’ve been lucky enough to attend SADD conferences as a facilitator on four occasions now and each year it gets bigger and better than the previous years," says Heather.
The conference takes place over three days and, for the Taranaki students, that started with a mini-van trip from New Plymouth through to Upper Hutt.
"On arrival it’s registration, bag drop, and then straight into it," says Heather.
"The students have all put their hands up to attend the conference in their own time during the school holidays and every year they work hard.
"Our area is lucky to have such a proactive partner in Marion Webby, of RoadSafe Taranaki. Marion enables this group of students from high schools across Taranaki to attend the conference."
This year, the students yet again wowed the SADD staff, facilitators and partners with their presentations based around road safety and producing resources that can be accessed by students through the SADD website.
These resources are then used by the students in their schools to produce SADD activity weeks and road safety focus days and months, such as Safer September.
"SADD also runs the National Leadership Programme, which enables students to deliver key road safety messages to their target audience and give them an opportunity to take a lead role by helping and mentoring their fellow students along the way," says Heather.
"Although shattered, when I arrived back in Taranaki after the conference the benefits of the work done by students for students is immeasurable."