Campaign Missions

Constable Kenny Koala Safety Education Campaign

Educating children on a range of crime prevention and child safety messages is an important objective of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) Crime Prevention Team. For more than 25 years, the Constable Kenny Koala Program initiatives have played a key role in delivering some of these messages to children between the ages of three and eleven.

As part of recent AFP efforts to increase and improve Crime Prevention activities within the ACT, research was undertaken to analyse past and present activities involving Constable Kenny Koala and evaluate his role in crime prevention and safety education to his target audience. As a result of this research, the AFP has developed a marketing plan that positions Constable Kenny Koala as the central focus of a coordinated educational program that introduces safety messages within the school curriculum, the home and the broader community.

Child Safety

The CKK campaign is principally aimed at delivering safety messages to young children and to inject a belief that crime prevention is a positive life style message to build on.

Constable Kenny Koala is the ideal face of the AFP within the targeted audience due to the similarities that exist between him and primary school children. As Constable Kenny Koala is an "eight year old", children are able to relate to him and to his thinking. Through school visits, Constable Kenny Koala is able to build the trust of children and deliver important safety messages.

What children learn from an early age will be carried through with them throughout the rest of their lives, so it is important to teach them the philosophy of "No Trouble" from an early age.

Community

The Constable Kenny Koala campaign has a strong community focus and endeavours to bridge the community and the Australian Federal Police. The campaign provides the community with an assessable avenue to the AFP and through visits and the educational materials supplied to the schools and its pupils, clear messages of safety are delivered.

Importantly, as a result of the Constable Kenny Koala campaign, children feel more at ease in approaching the police and asking for help. Constable Kenny Koala reinforces the message that the police are friendly, caring people who are there to help children just like them.

The safety messages delivered are reinforced throughout the child's progression through primary school. This element of the campaign is crucial as it builds a strong tie between Constable Kenny Koala, safety and the children.

Education

The core of the Constable Kenny Koala campaign is to educate primary school children at various levels. While the heart of the campaign is safety, this is taught through lessons and activities that involve a range of curriculum elements including language, mathematics and social skills. This is key to the successful implementation of the campaign as it allows a teacher to integrate the Constable Kenny Koala message into the curriculum.

Many of the CKK activities are designed to make the children interact with the teacher and each other while the homework or 'take-home activities' give children a chance to share what they have learnt with parents and siblings. This sharing ensures the Constable Kenny Koala message also reaches secondary markets of parents, carers, children and siblings.

Consultation

The campaign has ten reference schools (covering the three education system options) that are consulted on education aspects of the campaign. Agreed messages, educational materials and activities are tested by these schools and are modified to best suit the targeted age group.

This process assists the Constable Kenny Koala education team in developing education tool sets that directly respond to the needs of different age groups. Market testing the Constable Kenny Koala education kits ensures that not only the right message is being delivered, but also aids the development of appropriate promotional materials and scripts for the puppeteer.

All education packages are developed in consultation with the ACT Department of Education and Community Services.

Task Size

The target markets are primary school children from Pre-school to Year 6. Given the number of children in this sector and budget constraints, the campaign concentrates on delivering educational messages to children in Kindergarten and Years 2, 4 and 6. The approximate number of children enrolled between Kindergarten and Year 6 is 31, 300 and there are approximately 100 schools for each year group.

The Constable Kenny campaign is one of the biggest community based campaigns in Canberra.