SIX NATIONS – To give back to the community and to ensure the parents that received one of 40 boosters seats would have a safer child, Highly Qualified Person (HQP) Christa Jonathan teamed up with Six Nations Police and Health Services to give away booster seats at Stoneridge Daycare on Thursday, February 25.
“It felt really great,” said Jonathan in regards to giving out the booster seats, who had been hired as an HQP by the University of Windsor.
“There’s this project that’s going on all across Canada, and what they’re trying to do is they’re researching vehicular injury in First Nations communities and trying to find ways to prevent it.” said Jonathan. “So, the first thing I did was 200 surveys; we were set up in the Plaza last summer and if people did a 10 minute survey, they got a $10 gift card for Tim Hortons.”
“From doing that they also had me set up an advisory committee, so I got a couple people from the reserve. One was one of my cousin’s moms who lost my cousin, who died from a drunk driver,” she said. “Another was a social worker that had gotten out of a really bad car accident. I had also contacted the police and different organizations to see if they would come out.”Jonathan further explained that the committee then sent information as to what they felt was wrong within the Six Nations community in regards to speeding and accidents.
“So, with that they gave us 40 booster seats to give out,” she said, explaining that the seats cost about $100 each. “The main thing is that they clip into those little metal things on the seat of the car just like a car seat does. So, it makes it way more safe,” she said. “They were kind of surprised because I think that the other communities that they worked with had low populations,” she said. “We were only supposed to get 20, but he gave us 40, which was better,” she said.
Jonathan explained that after contacting the SN Police, they set up a date to hand out the seats in the Stoneridge Daycare lobby, which were gone in less than two hours. As well, the volunteers also gave out informational packages and provided demonstrations as to how to use the boosters seats and when.
“It felt really good to give back to the community because I know when people are doing research, they’re taking information from the community, or from people and they don’t ever really give back. So, it’s nice to give back and the people that I was working with made sure of that,” she said. “It gives back to our community, not only to all of those individuals, our community. There’s now 40 kids out there that are going to be a lot safer,” she said.
