How rewarding is to contribute to the safety of the road!

I started at Total in August 2012. In the beginning of my career I was in Chinese Research Institute of Environmental Sciences as a scientist and I have a senior colleague in that institute who made conventions for Total. She recommended me to the position at the Refinery and Chemicals. I got an interview opportunity, I performed well and was recruited.

At the end of 2016, I moved to the MS to work on the HSE system and sustainable development which is related to my background trainings and then I gradually involved in the project planning, the preparation and the supporting process.

The road safety program is organized in different cities by different entities such as affiliates of and plants of MS China which I coordinate (time arrangement, sites, training providers…). In the road safety program we educate the students on the road safety knowledge. We also make reporting to our local communities about our progress, our achievements and our improvement to evolve the session for the next year. We also contribute to the planning and got it approved. I gradually being involved into it!

Why did we launch this program? Before 2010, the traffic accident was very high in China including urban, suburbs and highways. There were an abnormal number of fatalities in the country and we realized that the problem came from a social and a society aspect.
We wanted to focus on some area in China to establish our corporate social responsibility about the sustainable development topics including road safety education, health, environment and energy. We wanted to share our safety knowledge and safety culture with the primary students.  

Thus, the project was initiated in 2010. Over nine years, the program has covered 13 cities across China from North to South of the country including the Metropolis of Beijing, Tianjin, Zhenjiang, Wuhan, Shanghai and also small cities around them which are less developed than Metropolis.

In the previous year, there have been over 138 sessions set up. One session includes 50 to 100 students. 11,500 students have participated in the session.
In 2017 we covered 9 cities with 26 sessions and we would like to continue our project in order to increase the impact. We will definitely expend the scale of the program!

At the beginning the designing and the planning team was at the top level of the organization. They have been more and more involved in the affiliates which coordinate local communities and identify the partnership with primary schools. The school teachers and parents’ feedback are very important to improve our service. 

For the local communities, our major objective is to raise the self-awareness and to pass down safety knowledge to the students by explaining them how to protect themselves, how to walk safely, how to behave safe when they are sitting in the car for instance.
The affiliates give us more feedback about the teachers, the parents, and the students. From their feedback we plan to involve some parents to help the students into our session. We are doing cooperation with all the affiliates of MS China.  

My first impression that I got from the communication with the students is that they are pretty interested in getting to know about the Group. Indeed, they show their strong interest and are very focused on our introduction. We feel very recognized and this encourages us to introduce more and to become confident and determinate!

The new sessions will include safety moments to let the students share their good cases of safety. Some of them have been educated by their parent to pay attention to the safety but not focused on the traffic. We feel that the students are very active and they really need some guidance to deal with the situations so that they can perform well and behave safely.
At the end of the session for the first time, there will be one Total safety corner established in the schools. It is a kind of permanent one consisting of an introduction, some knowledge sharings and easy tools (holding some traffic lines, traffic city signals)…we feel so responsible for these kids!

It is a project in a permanent continuity since we are ensuring that it will have even more impact. We are going to achieve some major objectives.
First of all, we will have to raise our primary schools students’ awareness on the road safety since they are still very young.
Then, we would like to develop our trainings by launching some games with a participation approach.
Finally, we aim to enrich the student’s knowledges to ensure the safety to protect themselves. For example they need to know about the safety signs, how to work and how to be sit safely in the car.

We want to make a very strong commitment and in the meanwhile to cast and to reinforce our corporate image social responsibility, community and local partnership overall area in China as well as achieving good reputation and enlarging our brand exposure which convened brand messages and our core value.