Deepika’s life-saving campaign

She is a student of Chettinad Vidyashram, class-5. She was selected by her school to participate in the Wiz Team 2006 event, conducted by Horlicks, at the Chennai city level in July 2006, and won the award after going through multiple rounds.

Deepika Easwaran thus became eligible to participate in the national finals of Wiz Team 2006, representing Chennai in the Junior Category (class-5-8) to be conducted in Bangalore by Horlicks from November 8-11 2006.

“As part of this national level competition, I am required to submit a project on a topic on social or environmental issues that face our country today.

"I have chosen the topic ‘Road Safety’, highlighting the importance of black stickers on the headlights of vehicles to reduce glare at night,” says Deepika.

This is a real time project and she has been campaigning for the past month in various parts of Chennai.

She has been at schools, colleges, important traffic intersections, petrol pumps and even the Koyambedu market. “The response was tremendous and people voluntarily came forward to have the black stickers pasted on their headlights,” exults her father, R Easwaran. The campaign was launched by Satyam Foundation and Women’s Christian College in October, in which Deepika participated and gave a speech on her project.

Chennai City Police Commissioner Letika Saran and Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Sunil Kumar participated in the campaign at the college.

Considering the laurels she is earning for the school, the institution has given her permission to do her campaign at any time of day. But Deepika has been able to juggle her studies and her project admirably.

Easwaran has been watching over little Deepika as she goes around convincing people by the hundreds about the need for safety on the roads and how the little black dots can actually help save lives.

Here is a sample of the speech she delivers as part of her campaign:

Respected Principal, teachers and my dear friends,

I am Deepika Easwaran from Standard V M. I am here today on behalf of the Wiz Team 2006 representing Chennai, selected to participate in the National Finals of a talent search competition, to be conducted by Horlicks in Bangalore in November this year.

As part of this national level competition, I am required to submit a project on a topic on social or environmental issues that face our country today. I have chosen the topic ‘Road Safety’, highlighting the importance of black stickers on the headlights of vehicles. Just to give you a brief idea on what this campaign is about, we see a number of vehicles on the road with glaring headlights, which make it difficult for the vehicles coming in the opposite direction. All that we need to do is to educate the people about the necessity of black stickers on the headlights, which reduces the headlight glare, so that the vision for opposite vehicles is much better. This is a very important campaign as the recent surveys show that majority of the accidents take place during nights due to poor visibility.

I was fortunate to be part of the recent launch programme for this campaign organised by Satyam Foundation and Women’s Christian College, Chennai, which was chaired by our City Police Commissioner, Smt. Letika Saran, IPS and the Joint City Police Commissioner, Mr Sunil Kumar, IPS. As part of my project, I feel it would be good to do my bit by campaigning through our school, my friends and public to create the awareness on road safety. There is no better place to start this campaign than our school, as there are a number of vehicles coming here every day.

Apart from campaigning in our school, I have planned to visit a few other educational institutions and petrol pumps, besides meeting people who drive public transport vehicles and create an awareness on sticking black spot stickers on their vehicles and follow road safety measures.

We have all seen signboards which warn us with a message ‘Accident Prone Zone – Drive Carefully’. Now, let us all join together in helping our Traffic Police Department in erecting sign boards which say ‘Accident Free Zone – Enjoy driving’. Shall each one of us also start this campaign by checking if our parents’ and friends’ and relatives’ vehicles also have this black sticker?