Around the world, road crashes claim over 1.3 million lives every year and this amount is disproportionately represented in the African region. In Kenya, Youths for Road Safety Kenya headed by Ms Sheila Atieno, our CORE Group representative for African English speaking countries has shared a touching initiative that couples road safety with blood donation to raise awareness of the cause in Kenya.
Road crashes are a cross-sectoral multi-faceted problem and this could not be more apparent in Kenya than with the linkage of road crashes to dangerously low blood reserves. In Kenya, hospital patients requiring blood face a 60% deficit in blood reserves and therefore lives are being put a risk.
Seeing the direct link between road crashes and blood donation, road safety organizations YOURSK – Youths for Road Safety Kenya and the Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT) partnered with blood donation organization BloodLife to raise awareness of both causes simultaneously. This manifested in the 3,000 Shoe Parade.
As well as 3000 Kenyans dying every year due to road crashes, 3000 young Kenyan mothers die due to the lack of blood during birth and so the two intitatives joined hands to combat this crisis by undertaking the parade. The 3000 Shoe Parade was a unique illustration of lives lost. The young volunteers layed out pairs of shoes down a designated path to which a parade of a musical band, scores of road safety volunteers and road safety banners marched down the route and met at the final exhibition point.
Shoes laid on the parade path serves as a chilling reminder of the lives lost.
The final route of the parade lead to a pile of shoes, illustrating the sheer quanitiy of life lost. These shoes each depict a precious life, the shoe is a personal choice of garment but is left behind after a road crash. The amount of lives lost, particularly young lives is a stark reminder that people in Kenya have to do something about the road safety crisis while simultaneously providing an active solution to the depleting blood stocks in the country.
The parade reached its finale at a park ground where alongside the shoe-pile, young volunteers had set up a camp ready for blood donations and at the same time, sensitizing young Kenyans on the dangers of the road.
The portrayal of shoes above and the blood donation carried out with the support of YOURS Kenya volunteers
The Executive Director of ASIRT, Ms Bright Oywaya, an international advocate for road safety and herself a victim of a road crash said, “I am worried over the casual manner acidents are being treated and it is time more effort was put in to reduce the number of deaths on our road”.
Moving into 2012, YOURS believes it is absolutely crucial that more initatives like this one are put into place to tackle several issues with one brush. These kinds of approaches raise awareness about more than one issue and offer not only partnership building between initatives that aim to preserve life but bring together causes that share common goals and hold similar links.