Leitrim County Council fire service has won the prestigious European Fire Safety Award for 2021 for the Erasmus+ funded ‘BFireSafeatSchool’ project at the 6th International Safety Education seminar (www.ises2021.eu) held in Croke park Dublin last week.
The BFireSafe@School project is an Erasmus+ funded project to develop a new fire safety education programme for post primary schools all over Europe. Leitrim County Council was the lead partner and the project consortium consisted of 9 project partners from 7 EU countries including Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Lithuania and Spain. Finian Joyce, Chief Fire Officer in Leitrim was the Project Coordinator.
It is a collaboration between teachers and fire service personnel who will share best practice and use innovative digital learning methods to deliver the project in school. The new fire safety training programme (consisting of 10 modules delivered in the classroom and online) has been translated into 10 European languages and is suitable for pupils aged 12 -18.
Three schools in Leitrim, namely Carrigallen Vocational School, Lough Allen College in Drumkeeran and Manorhamilton Community College took part in the pilot test in Ireland.
The programme is now going being rolled out in other EU Countries. A new Learning Management System was developed to manage all the content. A Teachers handbook is also part of the programme resources. Several innovative digital outputs were also developed to assist in the delivery of the programme such as an Augmented Reality App called FireSmart AR app, a Virtual Reality app called ‘Fire in the Home’, a gaming app called Rescue Heroes and a school evacuation video.
For further details check out the project website – www.bfiresafeatschool.eu.
