BY ANAT ROSENBERG
For years, Israel has tried different methods to increase awareness about road safety and to prevent traffic accidents, which have resulted in some 30,000 deaths since 1948 and cost the country billions of dollars annually.
In the past few months, the Israel Police and the National Road Safety Authority launched a new campaign to protect pedestrians from reckless drivers. Another initiative placed a demolished car at the center of a public square in Jerusalem to draw attention to the often-fatal consequences of car accidents.
A group of budding young entrepreneurs from AMIT Atidim Junior and Senior High School in Or Akiva recently decided to tackle the issue of Israel’s road safety as well, creating a board game called “Mind the Rules,” as part of their participation in a program called Young Entrepreneurs Doing Business.
The group of nine 9th-grade students formed a company called Milestones (their tag line is “Because Life Is Dear”) and worked with mentors from the business world to develop their game. They specifically chose an old-fashioned board game, and not a smartphone app, because it allows for more experiential learning and for quality time with family or friends.
“The students did market research and saw that games like this didn’t exist,” said Nelly Shikerman, a math teacher at AMIT Atidim who also supervises the young entrepreneurs project. “Many young children in Israel still don’t know the road-safety rules, and the students felt that what is taught in schools isn’t sufficient.”
They raised some seed funding and began developing the game with help from their mentors and the National Road Safety Authority, which sponsored the project. They worked with graphic designers and a printing plant to design and produce the game, which has up to three players—a driver, pedestrian, and bicycle rider. The cards feature 70 questions about road rules and safety that players must answer, and the questions are geared toward children of different ages.
The students translated the board game into
Arabic, Russian, and English, and marketed and sold it at shopping malls, book fairs, and schools. They also marketed it via a website they developed and on social media, with the aim of appealing to children so their parents will buy it. (One game costs about $14 or two for about $25.)
Then they took their initiative to the next level by competing in a regional contest for young entrepreneurs.
Not only did they come in first place in the regional competition, they won the national competition and represented Israel at the international young entrepreneurship competition in Riga, Latvia, in April. The Or Akiva team, comprising 14- and 15-year-olds, was the youngest team there—and they still came in first place in the Socially Responsible Business Award category and clinched second place overall.
“All along we said, we’re not selling a game, we’re saving lives,” said Stav, one of the young entrepreneurs. “We really didn’t see that many games that teach road safety in Israel or abroad, especially ones that deal with electric bicycles and cell phones and how they relate to this issue.”
In fact, a study conducted by researchers from Ben-Gurion University showed that a child pedestrian’s ability to safely cross the road is hindered more during a cell-phone conversation than an adult’s. According to the study, crossing the street “demands pedestrians integrate cognitive, attentional, and motor control abilities.”
The students’ victories are remarkable achievements for the town of Or Akiva, situated about 30 miles south of Haifa. Or Akiva was established in 1951 as a small development town that housed mainly immigrants from North Africa and Eastern Europe. Today, according to Israeli urban insight company Madlan, only 26 percent of its residents have a complete bagrut matriculation certificate, and 60 percent of them have blue-collar jobs (and the unemployment rate stands at 21 percent).
“The experience of working on this project gave us a taste of the business world and allowed us to experience it, which doesn’t usually happen for children our age,” said Yonatan, another of the students. “It really prepares us for the future because we know how the business world functions and how everything works—it was a really fun experience.”
Collaborative learning is part of the AMIT network’s focus on innovative learning methods that are preparing our students for the 21st century and giving them the critical skills they need to thrive not just in school, but in the army, in higher education, and in life.
“It was really cool and fun to work collaboratively because that doesn’t normally happen in school,” Yonatan said. “We had to overcome our disagreements and reach compromises. This kind of collaboration also prepares us for the future and for the workforce.”
Up until now the students worked with their mentors, but now they, as a team, are responsible for their product and for ensuring its success.
“We are working with printing plants and we are beginning to produce the game on our own and starting to sell and market it in different ways,” said team member Ben.
He went on to add, “Our main goal is that, at the end of this process, every household in Israel and many others around the world will have this game and gain knowledge about road safety. The ultimate aim of our game is that it will actually save lives.”
