Safetyville USA
 Signage on street in front of Safetyville, USA on Bradshaw Road in Sacramento, California. |
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| Founded | 1984 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Safety Center Incorporated |
| Type | 501(c)3 |
| Focus | Child health and safety education |
| Location |
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| Origins | Safetyville USA Children’s Safety & Health Education Programs |
| Website | www.safetycenter.org |
Safetyville, USA is a miniature city that sits on a little over 3 acres of land in Sacramento, California. It is a program that was designed to provide safety education to young children in an interactive manner. The miniature town is complete with tiny versions of the California State Capitol building, municipal building, business buildings, and various streets in Sacramento, California.
Safetyville, USA is part of the non-profit Safety Center, Inc.'s Children's Safety Program which provides life-saving safety skills and awareness education, and was opened at the Safety Center in 1984. The one-third scale town is complete with real sidewalks, crosswalks, streetlights, a police, fire and sheriff station, and businesses that can be found in any city such as McDonald's and Taco Bell. In June 1998 the Honorary Mayor of Safetyville was Dick Cable. Cable was a professional broadcaster for KXTV and News10 of Sacramento and the first Sacramento broadcaster to win an Emmy award.
The goal of the Safetyville program is to reduce injury and possible deaths, of children, from preventable accidents. The idea is to provide a hands on, interactive experience, rather than a barrage of information acquired through regular classroom educational methods. A trained volunteer tour guide leads the children, preschool age through the third grade, through the miniature city. The children are taught health and fitness, and a variety of safety skills including fire safety, bicycle safety, how to be a safe pedestrian, electrical safety, stranger danger, and railroad safety. 2009 marked the 25th anniversary of Safetyville, USA., and over 200,000 Northern California children had benefited from the educational experience, offered by the child safety program, up to that point. Approximately 10,000 children tour Safetyville, USA each year.
The hands on experience at Safetyville includes pushing buttons, and learning to look both ways before crossing the street while using the working street lights and crosswalk lights. Before watching a video at the "fire station" the tour guide engages the children by asking questions and there is a "quiz" after the video. There are many opportunities for questions and answers and for children volunteers to help throughout the tour. Additionally, the children are taught how to make a real 911 call, and they practice dialing the correct number and how they would talk to a 911 operator. They are taught how to "stop, drop, and roll" during the fire safety portion of the session, and they practice the technique on the spot.
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