The camera-work of these 18 school kids may be amateurish, but they certainly bring out the lack of awareness on road safety amongst pedestrians and motorists in the city.

Eighteen youngsters, between the age group of nine to 14 years and belonging to different schools in the city were part of Photovoice, a photojournalism programme to make children safer pedestrians and motorists. The programme also included children from six other nations.

For this bunch of enthusiastic kids, the opportunity to head out to the city’s streets, armed with cameras, to shoot their perspectives of road safety was a great learning experience, they say. Globally, 1,676 child participants photographed pedestrian environments, including the behaviour of pedestrians and motorists.

During their field trips earlier in April, each of these children clicked over 200 photographs per head, of various things on the city’s roads that they felt posed a risk to pedestrian safety. These photographs, along with those clicked by students from Sao Paolo, Toronto, Beijing, Seoul, Manila and Washington D C are being displayed at venues across these cities, with the objective of promoting pedestrian safety. In Mumbai, an exhibition was held at the Scouts & Guides Pavilion at Shivaji Park over the weekend, with images captured by children from the seven cities.

Of the photos displayed at the exhibition, a large number depicted the dismal condition of the city’s streets, congested with hawkers on both sides, unruly pedestrians jaywalking, with complete disregard for vehicles speeding their way, etc.

Quite candidly, these kids admit that at first they were quite hesitant to take part in the programme, mainly because the vacations were on and most didn’t know how to handle the camera. Later, after a seminar, they decided to attempt it, emerging finally as more “responsible” citizens. “Initially we thought it is just about clicking pictures, but later it dawned upon each one of us that awareness of road safety is a major problem in our city,” said Kayzin Daruwalla (12), a seventh grader from Walsingham House School.

Farzin Dastoor (12) from Bai Ratanbai FD Pandey Girls High School said that the association with the international programme was a great experience. According to her, it helped the team of young photographers distinguish between safe and unsafe pedestrian behaviour by chronicling the city’s roads for three days. “We being the future of the country, it was a good learning experience,” Farzin said. Recalling the field trips in the scorching summer to areas like Churchgate, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mahim, Chembur, etc, the kids say that only on Day One of the trip did they have to struggle with the sophisticated cameras.

Eighth grader from Campion, Aatush Kallyaniwalla, said: “Sometimes we mistakenly deleted so good pictures we clicked, but we enjoyed it all.”

Most of the kids believe now that pedestrians and motorists hardly follow any traffic rules. “We saw pedestrians crossing the road dangerously, jaywalking, motorists halting their vehicle on the zebra crossings, and more,” Kayzin observed. She added that the traffic police should come down heavily on such offenders.