Safety training by the busload at Tri Town Safety Village

Indiana students learn firsthand safety training on the ultimate field trip

In this Indiana city, providing critical home and safety training quite literally takes a village.

The Schererville-based Tri Town Safety Village is just that—a child-sized town fit with street crossings, trains and a house to teach Grade 2 and 4 students about traffic, railroad and fire safety.

The site provides the perfect place for school-aged children to get hands-on experience with general safety and how to respond when disaster strikes—all without the real-life emergency.

“It’s never too early to learn about how to respond and react to emergencies, even as a kid,” says William Jarvis, executive director at Tri Town Safety Village.

The heavily subsidized program (about $5 per student) means the village is highly accessible for all children throughout the state.

“You can’t put a dollar figure on teaching a child how to get out of a burning home,” says Jarvis.

For more than 18 years, the Tri Town Safety Village has been dedicated to the education of children and adults in the many areas of safety prevention. Although the village has three key feeder communities of Schererville, Dyer and Saint John—hence the “tri” title—schools send their classrooms come from as far north as East Chicago, IN and as far south as De Motte, IN.

“Visits are always welcome,” says Jarvis. “We need more safety centers like this developed across Canada and the U.S., but we’re happy to help as many people as we can until then.”