SAFE KIDS Pitt County has been awarded an $8,500 grant from SAFE KIDS Worldwide and FedEx Express that will be used to improve pedestrian safety near E.B. Aycock Middle School.

SAFE KIDS Pitt County and FedEx Express have convened a pedestrian safety task force of community leaders that will focus on child pedestrian safety. The task force will work throughout 2007 to implement environmental modifications at E.B. Aycock to improve pedestrian safety for students. Mounted speedboards will be placed along Red Banks Road in the school zones. Crosswalk re-striping also will be completed. Other improvements are pending.

Contributed photo (ENLARGE)

SAFE KIDS Pitt County recently received an $8,5000 grant from SAFE KIDS Worldwide and FedEx to to assist E.B. Aycock Middle School with environmental modifications for pedestrian safety. A task force to implement the modifications includes, from left on front row: Heather Stewart, Ellen Walston, Erika Eagle and Gina Cannon; and back row, from left, Jennifer Smith, Julie Cary, Lang Jones and Phil Worthington. Not pictured: Smokey Pierce, Meg Langston and Tom Tysinger.

Task force members include: Sgt. Phil Worthington with the Greenville Police Department; Tom Tysinger, director of the Public Works Department with the City of Greenville; Lang Jones with the N.C. Department of Transportation; Gina Cannon with FedEx Express; Ellen Walston with SAFE KIDS Pitt County; Jennifer Smith with Safe Communities of Pitt County; Meg Langston with SAFE KIDS Pitt County; Heather Stewart with Pitt County Memorial Hospital; Principal Julie Cary with E.B. Aycock Middle School; Erika Eagle with J.H. Rose High School; and Deputy Smokey Pierce with the Pitt County Sheriff's Office.

This is the eighth year the Safe Kids Walk This Way program has been active in communities across the United States. Safe Kids Worldwide and FedEx Express focus task force efforts on making physical modifications to environments where children have been involved in vehicle crashes as pedestrians. The Walk This Way program is designed to change physical conditions and make the pedestrian environment safer for children to walk.

In Pitt County, there have been five youth pedestrian deaths in since 2001. There have been 40 youth pedestrian injuries locally in since 2001.

Pedestrian injury remains the second-leading cause of accidental death among children ages 5 to 14. Every year nationwide, more than 630 children ages 14 and younger die from pedestrian-related injuries, and more than 30,000 go to the emergency room.

SAFE KIDS Pitt County activities are designed to help children walk safely all year round.

SAFE KIDS Pitt County works to prevent accidental childhood injury, the leading killer of children 14 and younger

The local organization is a member of Safe Kids Worldwide, a global network of organizations dedicated to preventing accidental injury.