In South Africa over 10% of the population lives in informal settlements. Every year devastating fires sweep through these densely populated shantytowns. It is estimated that in South Africa 10 shack fires break out every day, causing over 200 people to lose their lives each year.

As part of their corporate social investment, our client, Engen, briefed us to design and produce their annual paraffin safety calendar.

With the 2013 calendar, we took our paraffin safety message one step further and created a calendar that doubles as a fire blanket.

Although fire blankets are not a new invention, combining them with a wall calendar is. Paraffin fires spread incredibly quickly. And regular fire blankets are not generally kept close enough at hand to get to paraffin fires while they are still small enough to extinguish.

The Engen paraffin safety calendar is designed to hang on the wall showing the date 365 days of the year. And when the unthinkable happens, it’s right there in plain sight and within arms reach. With a quick shake it unfolds into a flame retardant fire blanket 4 times the size, ready to suffocate a fire as it starts.

Because ink is flammable, a lot of research had to be done to find flame retardant inks to print the calendar design onto the fireblanket.

By distributing these calendars, we’re not only able to save one shack. We could also stop it spreading to hundreds of surrounding homes.

The goal is to effect real change and prevent as many runaway shack fires as possible. This is the first year that we have produced these fire blankets, we hope to produce them again next year.