COMPTON, Calif. – More than 600,000 children have been insulated against serious injury and death while riding in vehicles, thanks to safety advocates, and benefactors General Motors and Safe Kids Worldwide. Launched in 1997, in conjunction with the annual NAACP Image Awards activities in Los Angeles, GM and Safe Kids partnered for the Safe Kids Buckle Up (SKBU) program, the world’s largest child-seat inspection initiative of its kind. Nearly a quarter million free seats have been distributed by GM since the program’s inception at no charge to low-income families.

“We’re out here as a sponsor for the NAACP Image Awards, and as part of the relationship, we thought it was very important to reach out to people in the inner city,” says Rod Gillum, GM’s vice president of corporate responsibility and diversity. “So we’re doing our part, making sure the parents are educated and making sure the kids are properly protected as they travel along highways and city streets.”

GM and Safe Kids Worldwide have amplified the program’s focus to include 5-to-9-year-olds who should be using belt-positioning booster seats. “Our focus is injury prevention for kids at 14 years or under,” says Wes Bender, the manager of operations for the West Coast USA division of Safe Kids Worldwide. “And the coalitions at the grassroots level, they do programs; we initiate and support them with funding through our sponsors.”
–terry shropshire For more information, please log onto www.safekids.org, or www.gm.com.

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