Social entrepreneur Alma Jordan, founder of farm safety platform, AgriKids, will feature in the series finale of ‘Changing Ireland: My Big Idea’ docu series about people working to solve some of Ireland’s biggest social problems, on RTÉ One on Monday, April 20, at 8:30pm.
The series is produced for RTÉ One, in association with Social Entrepreneurs Ireland (SEI). Alma was also part of the SEI awards programme in 2019.
AgriKids started off as Alma wanting to change how we perceived and delivered farm safety education. She was keen to move away from what she saw as the emphasis on enforcement on farmers approach.
“Developing child-friendly resources that parents and schools could utilise was how it all began. Story books, activity books, digital resources all led on to events and workshops.
“Since then I have reached in excess of 28,000 primary school children with workshops, never once advertising the fact that I run them. It’s word of mouth from teachers and parents,” said Alma.
“What began as writing story books has evolved into a growing farm safety educational platform for all. The ethos remains from day one: to engage educate and empower children to be farm safety ambassadors,” she said.
“The fact that I will not have the opportunity to visit schools during the spring and summer term is a major concern for me. It’s my busiest time to get the message out there ahead of the summer holidays. The message travels with the children and the action follows,” said the AgriKids founder.
Rules must be put in place
“Covid-19 has left many parents with no childcare options outside of their own home, so rules must be put in place and schedules altered to allow the running of the farm, a second parent working from home and children home from school to co-exist simultaneously. It’s tough, but it can be done,” she said.
“If one parent is working frontline then it’s up to those at home to establish the rules: seat belts in tractors; taking time to remind the children of the dangers ahead of the farm visit so they are forewarned and forearmed; and allowing them to carry out jobs that are age appropriate.
“This is an unprecedented time. Therefore our actions and responses too must align with this crisis.
I will never be OK with children under 10 being filmed driving tractors and posted to social media. Quite frankly I don’t care if it’s something we all did when we were growing up. The scale and speed of the machinery I grew up with are in a different league to those my children now see: bigger and faster. There is simply no comparison.
“I have always endorsed the many benefits of growing up on a farm. Children have access to science, animal husbandry, enterprise and food origins. What a classroom. But what needs to be remembered is that caution and common sense must prevail, never exposing our children to unnecessary risks,” said Alma.
“I get upset when I hear of the fatalities, I always have done. It was through tears for the deaths of two young children in August 2014 that led me to develop AgriKids.
“It could be any of us at any time that are affected; none of us are safe. I include myself and my family in that. This is a culture change, and attitude change that is needed.
“The message is only going to get through once we acknowledge that certain behaviours and attitudes are not helpful. The case of three children driving a tractor down a main street led to a flood of comments on social media from people laughing and jeering at Gardai for stopping them.
“‘What harm where they doing?’; ‘Sure that’s how we all learned’ were among the comments. I wonder what the comments would be if we were reading a headline on the deaths of three children or the deaths of other road users, or both,” said Alma.
Speaking out
“I get disheartened when I read these attitudes, as it reminds us of just how far we still have to go. However, I have noticed there is more of a change and more people are starting to speak out against this kind of culture. That is a good thing,” she said.
From the workshops, the children are given farm safety as a homework topic and many parents speak to the teachers the following day, grateful that the topic had been discussed.
“It is a feature on the national school curriculum so AgriKids is fulfilling that requirement. I get very encouraging reviews, comments and feedback. Teachers say that something like farm safety impacts their children today and many have grave concerns on the welfare of some of their children who live on farms,” said the Agrikids founder.
“In schools, teachers also speak about their duty of care. One teacher even confronted a family whose young son was driving tractors on the road. The teacher was also a farmer and mentioned how the mother of the young boy thanked her for speaking up and hoped that maybe they would listen to her as the mother’s own concerns were going unnoticed.
I felt terribly sorry for that mother and do hope that something like AgriKids will give a voice to what may be many parents whose concerns go unnoticed.
SEI said it is grateful to be able to provide AgriKids with the opportunity to feature and share its key messages with a national audience through the docu series. The episode will feature Alma presenting to primary schools in Carlow and Wexford.