Community Rail Safety Awards

Let’s make rail safety a shared responsibility. With the energy and leadership of young New Zealanders, we can prevent harm and protect futures.

Celebrating Student Leadership

Are you a secondary school student with a passion for keeping your community safe around trains and tracks?

The Community Rail Safety Awards are a new initiative from KiwiRail, TrackSAFE NZ, and Kaitiaki o Ara/Students Against Dangerous Driving (SADD) recognising our rangatahi/ young people who are stepping up, speaking out, and making a real difference.

These awards shine a light on the creativity, leadership, and commitment of students who raise awareness about the dangers in and around the rail corridor and encourage safe behaviour at level crossings and station platforms.

Why does it matter?

Every year in Aotearoa people are hurt or killed in preventable incidents around railway tracks and level crossings. Whether it’s distractions from devices, risky shortcuts, or not obey the signs and signals at level crossings.

What do I have to do?

Whether you run a rail safety quiz, create videos or posters to share with your school, or get out and engage with your community, we want to recognise your mahi. We’ve got plenty of resources to help you get started, have a look at https://www.sadd.org.nz/rail-safety

Other ideas for initiatives include:

Creative campaigns – social media, videos, or art that communicates a powerful rail safety message
School-based initiatives – events or activities run in schools to engage students with rail safety
Community impact – projects that reach beyond school gates to engage the wider whānau or local community.

There are more real world ideas to get you started in this document.

Who can enter?

The awards are open to all secondary school students (Years 9–13), regardless of if they are part of a SADD group.

What can I win?

Year 13 students: The awards of $500 are offered each year to a maximum of two recipients.

Years 9–12 students: The awards are offered each year to a maximum of three recipients. The prizes consist of fully funded registration for the SADD Conference in the following year AND A $300 Prezzy Card each.

SADD conferences are held over three days during the Term 1 - Term 2 school holidays in two-three cities around the country. The conferences are an opportunity for students to connect and take part in team activities and hear from guest speakers. The prize to attend the conference covers registration costs, accommodation, food and activities.

How do I enter?

Click on this link to fill out our application form.

You should include a descriptive summary of your activities (up to 400 words). The summary should include the key factors that have contributed towards demonstrating how your entry meets the judging criteria.

You will need to provide your full name, school name and school year in your submission. Also provide contact details of a referee, such as a teacher or one of the SADD delivery team.

Judging process

Entries will be judged jointly by the Kaitiaki o ARA/SADD Aotearoa General Manager, the KiwiRail Community Engagement Manager and the TrackSAFE Foundation Manager.

Key dates

Entries Open: 15 August
Entry Deadline: 30 September
Winners Announced: 1 November

Judging criteria

Applicants will be selected based on the degree to which they have demonstrated commitment to rail safety education in New Zealand.

This could include the education of your peers, younger students and/or the wider community.

Examples could include: an awareness campaign, presentation to classmates or younger students, organisation of a relevant field trip or engagement with an annual event such as International Level Crossing Awareness Day in June or Rail Safety Week in August.

Terms and conditions

The entrant accepts and agrees to the following terms and conditions:

The entrant has obtained the permission of all relevant parties to proceed with the entry.
The entrant accepts that the judges' decision is final, and no correspondence will be entered into.
The judges undertake to observe the confidentiality of entries and to declare or avoid any possible conflict of interest.
The judges reserve the right not to make an award where, in the judges' opinion, no entry of adequate standard has been received.