This section is a summary drawn from the NHTSA Promotion Toolkit. The Toolkit provides information about activities designed to encourage children to walk and bike to school.

Events

Special events promote and stimulate walking and biking. Events such as Walk and Bike to School Day give people the opportunity and motivation to try something new for a day, in the company of others. Once children and parents discover the joys of walking and biking through such events, they are more motivated to continue on their own.

Walk and Bike to School Days

Walk and Bike to School Day can be simple or elaborate, depending on the needs of your community. Design an event that your team can handle and that suits your community. Be sure to give your team sufficient time to plan your event. It usually takes 4 to 6 weeks to organize the first Walk and Bike to School Day, but some communities have created events in just a couple of weeks.

Here are some tips for organizing a Walk and Bike to School Day:

• Hold a meeting to organize volunteers.
• For your first event, try to work within an existing organization like the PTA or a neighborhood association that has the community contacts to recruit volunteers.
• Involve as many people as possible to build excitement that will spread to others; involve school staff to help promote the event internally.
• Invite local senior groups, biking and hiking clubs and other community groups to join in.
• Get celebrities and local officials to come walk with the kids
• Ask for a sheriff or police escort to be present at the event.

Planning the Event

At your first meeting, determine the goals for the event. Is the focus on fitness, or is this a way to bring attention to a needed improvement such as a crosswalk? Whatever your goals, discuss them and write them down. This will help you in designing your promotional packages.

Decide the scope and structure of the event. You can invite parents and children to walk on their own and create a welcome table at the school. You also can create staging areas where parents can drop off their children to walk or bike with a group. A nearby shopping center or church might allow you to use its parking lot or there may be a park near the school where children can gather.

Make a list of all tasks and assign them to members of the team. If the attendance is low, then recruit other people who might be able to help, and assign tasks to them. At the end of the meeting review the tasks and responsibilities one more time.

Children’s Safety

Ensuring the children’s safety is essential for any event. Adequate and competent supervision is critical. Recruit adults to meet children at pre-determined locations or staging areas and walk or bike with them to school. If walking, try to have at least one adult for every 12 children (or more if the children are in kindergarten through second grade); if biking, include more adults, approximately one adult for every seven children. Ask parents to walk with their own children, especially if they’re young.

When traveling on busy streets, it can be helpful to have extra supervision. Some communities have adults stationed at strategic places along routes to school. Often schools provide crossing guards at busy intersections near schools. Local law enforcement is usually willing to participate and may provide one or more officers for the event. Some police departments even have bicycle patrols that can bike alongside the children.

If you are organizing Bike Trains, make sure that children are properly equipped and sufficiently trained for safe cycling. Every child must wear a properly fitted bike helmet. Conduct traffic safety training before the event to ensure that children understand the rights and responsibilities of cyclists. Limit participation to those children who are old enough to negotiate traffic on a bike unless they are accompanied by their parent.

Use the opportunity of a Walk and Bike to School Day to encourage people to get to know their community and identify safety concerns. The Safe Routes Checklist is used to assist in mapping the community to evaluate routes. Pass out the checklist no later than the day before and ask the children to use the list with their parents as they walk. Passing out the checklist earlier will give families an opportunity to walk the route in advance of Walk and Bike to School Day. Have the children draw maps and display them around the school. Publish the results of the checklists in the next school newsletter and use the information as part of your Task Force mapping process. Use this as an opportunity to recruit more volunteers.

Other Innovations

• Hold a class-by-class competition – Reward the class that has the greatest percentage of students walking and biking with a breakfast, an extra recess, or a pizza or ice cream party using food donated by local businesses.

• Hold a “Best Ways to Get Your Parents to Walk/Bike to School With You” contest—Have students come up with one-sentence ideas for getting parents to walk with kids. Get a panel of local celebrities or radio, TV, or news journalists to judge the contest. Reward both creativity and feasibility. Publish a list of winners.

• Have students draw a memory map (cognitive map) of their walk to school. Ask them to keep a diary of their walking trips. Invite them to write or draw what they saw, what was beautiful, what would make the walk safer, and what changes would make them more likely to walk again soon.

• Hold a treasure hunt by asking students to identify certain landmarks on their way to school. These can be fun items such as houses with garden gates, certain trees, and common flowers. You should also include street signs, important buildings, and other landmarks that are important for children to know. Have them map out where they found each item. Give out prizes for those who complete their maps.

• Create themes. For instance, in February, use the theme of a healthy heart to promote physical fitness. Invite the school nurse or other health professionals to give talks on the importance of good health. Invite the local hospital or the heart association to give out information. Hold a health fair at the school.  

Contests

Challenge students to change their behavior through contests and competitions. Contests and competitions are fun and children are motivated to win prizes. Contests are effective in encouraging the students to act beyond their normal experience and try out new ideas and activities. Yet, be cautious not to overdo a good thing. For example, a yearlong contest might cause children to lose enthusiasm. Keep changing the themes to keep students interested. Not all contests reward participants with prizes. Sometimes the students’ reward is seeing their work published or used for a community education campaign. 

Promote Your Program

Repetition is the key to the continued success of your SRTS program. A SRTS program should be promoted by maximizing its visibility through repeated outreach to its potential “customers.” The rule of thumb in marketing is that people need to hear and read about an event at least three times before they pay attention. Personal contact increases the likelihood of participation. The more times that children and parents hear about the program, the better the chances of participation. Specifically having teachers and respected adults and students promoting the events can greatly increase visibility. 

Flyers and Banners

Post flyers around the school announcing team meetings, events, and contests. Expand beyond the school and post them at local businesses. Make your flyers attractive by using eye-catching graphics. Find a volunteer who has experience in graphic design to help you design your flyers. Be sure to include all the important information—who, what, where, when, and why, but don’t load up your flyer with too much text because pictures often tell the story better. Make sure your flyers are easy to read and that the most important information is big and bold. You also can make large banners that can be placed in strategic places at the school and in the community. 

Backpack Mail

Most schools have a day every week when they send home notices with the students (“backpack mail”). This is an excellent and low-cost opportunity to communicate with parents on a regular basis. Send home your flyers as well as more detailed information on the program. This is one way you can do your parent surveys. Provide parents with fact sheets on the significance of health and safety for the children, for the community and for the natural environment. Every piece of information sent out keeps your program visible.  

School Newsletters

Most schools have newsletters that are sent home periodically. Find out if you can include a regular column in the newsletter and get the deadlines for the submission of articles. Use the school newsletter as an opportunity to talk about the Safe Routes to School program and initiate discussion. Be sure to announce all events and contests in at least two separate issues of the school newsletter. Let parents know when classroom activities are scheduled, especially if the children need to bring their bicycles or other equipment. 

Media Alerts

The media love stories about children. Send out regular press releases to announce your events and contests. Publicize the results of your surveys. Stage a photo opportunity with students walking and biking but be sure to get model releases for the children used in the photo because they cannot be photographed at schools without parental permission. Follow up every press release with a phone call. Media outlets receive numerous press releases so a phone call will get their attention. Form a relationship with the editor or a writer and be sure to call them every time you have a newsworthy story. Don’t forget to thank the reporter or editor if your event was mentioned in print. The editorial page is also an excellent opportunity to get more publicity for your program. Have team members write letters to the editor or longer opinion pieces. 

E-mail

E-mail is an excellent tool for communicating with busy people. At all meetings and events, collect e-mail addresses and develop a comprehensive e-mail list to keep your supporters informed. Include elected officials and school and city staff people on your list. Keep your e-mail messages short and to the point. Announce events, classroom activities, meeting reminders, and other updates. Many schools have created their own e-mail lists. You can often make use of these to announce your events, classroom activities and contests. These lists are also useful for recruiting volunteers.

You can also start your own e-mail list-serve within your school or with other teams in your community. List-serves are made available by private servers to allow multiple parties to have access to each other without having to enter individual addresses. These are usually free and allow for two-way communication within the group. This allows you to keep people informed about your activities and build support for the program. It is a good way to communicate with volunteers who don’t attend meetings. You may want to suppress the address list to protect parents’ privacy.

Web Sites

Many schools now host their own web sites. Ask if you may have a page on the school’s web site. Cities also have web sites and you can ask for a page on that site. You can also set up your own web site to keep people abreast of your activities and then link it to the city and school sites.  

Direct Mail

Send out a mailing to every parent at the school or a community-wide mailing to announce events or workshops. While direct mail can be expensive, your city or school may have the budget to include you in a mailing. Direct mail assures that everyone sees your announcement or survey.  

School Announcements

Request that the principal make announcements over the loudspeaker for events and contests. For Walk and Bike To School Days, the students should be reminded repeatedly to participate. Put an announcement up on the reader board. Have the teachers announce it in the classrooms during homeroom. 

Classroom Activities

Classroom activities help to raise awareness and get students excited about the program. Combine classroom activities with your events so that they happen in the same week or in the week leading up to your event. This helps to build enthusiasm for the event.

Keep the Energy Alive

With contests and events, children will participate in SRTS programs in much greater numbers. However, they will return to their old habits without continued reinforcement. Use all of the above techniques to keep the energy alive. Continue to remind parents and children about the importance of reducing traffic and the health and environmental benefits of walking and biking. Work with your SRTS Task Force to improve the conditions of the streets to provide safer access.

Make sure you thank your volunteers often. Let them know they are appreciated. Give your team an opportunity to bond with each other. Empower them by giving them responsibility and decision making powers. Volunteers need to feel they have ownership of the program and that their ideas are valued. Treat each other with respect even when you disagree.

Have fun with your program. Walking and biking are thoroughly enjoyable activities. Make that evident with everything you do. People are attracted to those with positive attitudes. You will get more volunteers, more media attention, and more cooperation from your city and school officials when you are positive and upbeat. Remember, you’re not only an organizer you’re a cheerleader.