4.000 game boxes are being made available to primary schools throughout Austria this year as part of the “SAFETY Tour”.

The SAFETY Tour (also known as the “Children’s Safety Olympics”) and organised by the Austrian Civil Protection Association for more than 20 years now, is not taking place as a large series of events this year due to COVID, but directly in the classrooms.

Up to 4,000 primary school classes will receive special game boxes this year, which will be used to teach the children safe behaviour in everyday life through play. From how to get to school safely to familiarising themselves with emergency numbers, the children are introduced to the content through ten different games. On 22 April, the first of a total of 4,000 game boxes for primary schools were handed over at the Sonnwendviertel local educational campus in Vienna by the Civil Protection Association, the Director of Education and AUVA, Austria’s main accident insurance institution.

“It is an essential task of the Civil Protection Association to prepare the Austrian population for possible crises. Several thousand primary school pupils from all over Austria take part in the “SAFETY Tour” every year. I am delighted that we were able to bring the project to schools again this year despite the pandemic and in a different form,” says Andreas Hanger, President of the Civil Protection Association with great satisfaction.
“Safety has always been a very high priority in Vienna. To ensure that accidents are avoided as far as possible and that people react appropriately to emergencies, we attach great importance to child-oriented prevention work,” says Director of Education Professor Heinrich Himmer.

“Raising awareness at a young age is a key aspect of AUVA’s prevention work. And so we support this campaign, which promotes a playful approach to the topics of health and safety in education,” explains engineer Bernd Toplak, Head of the Prevention Department at AUVA’s regional office in Vienna. Bernd Toplak, Leiter der Präventionsabteilung der AUVA-Landesstelle Wien.

The Civil Protection Association’s “SAFETY Tour” project has been supported by the Ministry of the Interior and AUVA since its inception. This year’s edition was also carried out with the support of these long-standing partners.