PASSPORT TO SAFETY IS:
a unique, not-for-profit, cross-Canada catalyst for change intended to help eliminate needless injuries and preventable deaths of young Canadians aged 24 and under.
Passport to Safety supports the vision that our children enter and then return home from safe workplaces every day, which are therefore safe workplaces for people of all ages.
Young people challenge a Passport to Safety "test", based on learning outcomes developed by health and safety curriculum experts from most provincial and territorial jurisdictions across Canada.
Successful participants are awarded a "transcript" that can be attached to resumés to demonstrate their basic awareness of health and safety. This basic level of awareness becomes a foundation on which to build all the other essentials required to be safer and healthier workers.
Participants are then encouraged to add more credits for other courses that help people manage risk, such as first-aid, babysitting, water-safety, snowmobile safety and literally hundreds of others. This supports and adds value to their efforts to find a job.
Passport to Safety is also designed to encourage and generate discussion about health and safety education and increase participation in training across Canada.
GOVERNANCE:
Passport to Safety, through its management, currently reports to the Board of Directors of the Safe Communities Foundation of Canada (SCF), which initially supported and seed-funded the development of a national Passport to Safety program, with the intent of benefiting all stakeholders in health and safety in Canada.
All Passport to Safety revenues are committed to supporting the cause of injury prevention in Canada, which is also consistent with the objectives of Safe Communities Foundation.
Passport to Safety reports on its finances and manages its own staff and supplier relationships in a "stand-alone" manner, so as to provide clarity and transparency to its specific operations. The finance committee and the full Board of Directors of the Foundation apply the same rigor to Passport to Safety as to the other activities of the Foundation. This transparency not only ensures accuracy, clarity and accountability for Passport to Safety operations and finances today, but also creates an openness and flexibility that will allow it to evolve any structural and governance framework for Passport to Safety in the best interests of all stakeholders in the future.
The Safe Communities Foundation itself was incorporated as a registered charity 1996. SCF has been facilitating successful grassroots injury prevention programs for more than seven years. Its Board of Directors is charged with ensuring that appropriate standards of integrity, governance and fiduciary accountability are met. This accountability is necessary to ensure to all partners that such standards do indeed exist and that appropriate procedures are followed.
For more information on SCF, its governance and its activities, visit http://www.safecommunities.ca.
The Executive Director of Passport to Safety, Paul Kells, is also the SCF Vice-Chair and Founder. He reports on Passport to Safety matters to the Board of Directors of the Foundation.
Passport to Safety enjoys close links with the staff and communities of the SCF network, but does not restrict its community links to members of the SCF network of communities.
THE ORIGINS OF PASSPORT TO SAFETY:
The original "idea" is believed to have originated in Alberta, but was initially presented to and acted upon in the Peterborough area of Ontario. The Kawartha Manufacturer's Association began work on the concept, but soon turned it over to the local Safe Community coalition in Peterborough because of its broader reach throughout the entire community. Thus, the "Peterborough Pilot" was born.
As with any pilot, many lessons were ultimately learned. The most positive lesson of all was that the core concept of a "risk management" or "safety" transcript for young people was brilliant.
The Peterborough organizers, at the peak of its activity, reported memberships of more than 200 employers and over ten thousand young Passport to Safety members over a five year period, all in a community with a population of only approximately 65,000 people.
Still, there were also some very hard lessons that ultimately served as defining factors in the development of the national model. For example, in its original format the local coalition organized and paid expenses to over 20 volunteers to deliver training into the schools. For the coalition, this meant a heavy scheduling load, that all original and update records had to be entered manually into a database, that Passports to Safety were printed on paper and that additional credits had to be entered as stamps.
The costs, huge effort and thousands of person hours involved made the project extremely difficult to sustain in the long run. From these lessons, Passport to Safety determined that reducing costs, creating efficiencies, and generating self-sustaining revenues were crucial.
In addition, advisors to Passport to Safety from across Canada (see next section) concluded that a "test" mechanism, with underlying information to guide young people through it, should be used to support other existing training efforts in Canada, rather than replacing them with its own "awareness" program.
This meant that any young person with training from any source, such as school or outside school programs, job experience, self-study or any other method, would use Passport to Safety as a tool to validate and reinforce a basic minimum standard.
Finally, these students would then receive credit for it from employers, anywhere in Canada they might travel to, through a web based transcript system.
Finally, Passport to Safety owes its existence to, wishes to acknowledge and also pay tribute to the pioneers of the concept in Peterborough. Without the examples and lessons learned from the experiences of those involved, many of whom made considerable sacrifices, we would not be offering this wonderful tool to millions of Canadians today, and eventually, to young people around the world.
HOW PASSPORT TO SAFETY EVOLVED INTO A "NATIONAL" MODEL:
In its own evaluation of the project in 2001, the Peterborough local committee urged that a national organization step forward and assume responsibility for pursuing youth awareness through Passport to Safety across Canada. It urged that the Safe Community Foundation be that organization.
In May, 2002, the Founder and Vice Chair of SCF, Paul Kells, asked the Board for its support in this effort and committed to spending his time fully engaged in this and other related activities. The Board agreed and provided seed capital and additional expense money to begin the effort.
Others soon joined the effort, with both financial and human energy contributions, including the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario and Hydro One.
Paul Kells then approached 40 citizens across Canada to assist in guiding the philosophy, design and content of Passport to Safety, as members of a volunteer Standards and Advisory Board see "Who's Involved" on this website for more details).
These dedicated individuals included researchers, not-for-profit executives, education specialists, youth workers, curriculum writers, health and safety professionals, civil servants, organized labour members, business people, academics, students and other young people, including the members of the Cross Canada Youth Advisory committee.
In the end, volunteer curriculum experts from 7 different provinces and territories had a hand in writing the learning outcomes and test questions as volunteers. Experts and concerned citizens in several more jurisdictions offered additional input.
The goal of this group of dedicated professionals and volunteers was to establish a "pre-work" foundation of the minimum health and safety knowledge any of us would want any young person to possess (see Passport to Safety learning outcomes on our website.
This broad representation created a de facto recognition of Passport to Safety as a basic minimum pre-employment standard for young people across Canada.
In fact, the quality of this program has led the WSIB of Ontario to officially recognize Passport to Safety's test as a desired minimum standard for young people before they go to work and receive job specific training.
The learning outcomes themselves were finalized in the spring of 2003, the first draft or pilot version of the test and website went online on June 15, 2003, was quietly launched as a full scale tool on October 1, 2003 and will be officially launched as on November 24, 2003 in Ottawa at the Canadian Injury Prevention Conference.
STAKEHOLDER & PARTNER RELATIONSHIPS, INCLUDING REVENUE SHARING:
Financial sustainability of the Passport to Safety program is an important consideration at the local and national level. Passport to Safety is intended not only as a catalyst to support, encourage and promote injury prevention activities, but also to ultimately contribute financially to the sustainability such activities, not only in workplaces but in all environments.
Thus, from its inception as a national effort, the program has been designed to become financially self sustaining, through various fund-raising elements. These elements include:
Individual members (or cardholders), for which a modest (9$ + taxes, shipping) cost per member is charged. Most often, these youth memberships will be sponsored by others.
- Employer memberships
- Employer sponsorships
- Donations
Revenue generation through partner and other offerings (e.g. availability of certain recognized training and other services, and potentially products such as first-aid, fire safety, etc. to employer and individual members)
Our immediate focus is on youth and employers of all kinds in all sectors. We seek to help spark a change of culture to eliminate needless injury, and to act as a unifying force and catalyst to this end. To broaden our reach and engage like-minded partners in our efforts, we enter into "recruiter" relationships designed to sign up employer and youth members.
Such recruiters include local community organizations, health and safety associations and councils, Worker Compensation Boards, youth organizations, labour organizations and others representing associations of young people, business groups, etc.
Each recruiter or partner relationship is examined and approved on a one-by-one basis. No individual or group can offer price discounts or potentially participate in revenue sharing without such approval.
The method of revenue sharing available to recruiters depends on whether they are community-based coalitions or provincial/national representative "organizations" or "associations (referred to as "recruiter organizations" and "community recruiters" respectively.
Some organizations do not wish to share in revenue generation, preferring instead to contribute the money to the operation of Passport to Safety.
RECRUITER ORGANIZATIONS are able to reduce employer member fees (employer memberships only, not card fees) to their sign ups at a maximum 10% discount from the regular Passport to Safety employer member fee.
The fee itself is determined by the size of the business (ranging from $49.00 fee for firms with 5 or less employees, to $2,999.00 for firms with 2000 or more employees).
In addition, such recruiting organizations are entitled to a 10% recovery of the total net fee charged to any participating employer. This revenue can be retained by the recruiter organization and committed to injury prevention activities or can be re-directed to Passport to Safety, at its choosing. Both models are currently operating.
COMMUNITY RECRUITERS provide administration of the program at the local level. This includes, but may not be limited to, promotion, advertising, registering young workers and local businesses, collecting fees and when required, distributing Passport to Safety cards. More than one Community Recruiter can exist in a geography.
Approved Community Recruiters receive 60% after expenses of the $9 (plus taxes and shipping) individual member fee and 60% of any employer fees when these revenues are generated locally. The Passport national program receives 40% after expenses.
Any employer or card revenues generated directly by Passport to Safety in communities without officially approved Passport to Safety recruiter organizations remain 100% with the national program. Card revenues generated directly by Passport to Safety are not eligible for revenue sharing.
5% of member (not sponsor) revenues from national or provincial employers member fees that are directly generated by Passport to Safety nationally or provincially will be distributed annually on a pro rata basis to the appropriate participating and recognized community recruiter groups.
Funds directed to local administering groups must be used to support local Passport to Safety activities or related injury prevention efforts.
In a case where a recruiting organization signs up a member employer in a participating recruiter community, each recruiter community will receive 60% of the net fee after all membership expenses are deducted. Such expenses will include, but may not be limited to, the discount, the 10% recruiter cost and all mailing and membership materials costs incurred by Passport to Safety as part of its member recognition program.
In addition, local community and organization recruiters may attract national Gold or Platinum sponsors, and a substantial percentage of any such sponsorship generated directly by any given community or recruiter is re-directed back to that organization.
For more information on how to becomer a recruiter organization or community, please contact us by telephone or e-mail.
At the national level, staffing will be provided to administer the overall program and provide accountability to the Board, and to offer the program direct to employers and participants where no community recruiter exists.
