Belize is a leading example of how young people, who have been empowered by skills and knowledge can go on to build massive awareness across the country. In 2015 and 2016 we trained 34 young leaders in road safety. From understanding the road safety crisis facing youth in Belize to the action and steps they can take to make a difference. Since then, we have seen continuous action, endless creative output.
Belize continues to see a generation of youth growing up listening to catchy road safety jingles championed by their peers as well being exposed first hand to road safety peer-education through in school workshops.
One of our massive successes in capacity development and empowering youth is the two-year programme established in partnership with the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the Government of Belize (GOBZ).
Having seen our ground breaking workshops in action at the VYBZING Forum in Saint Lucia, CDB approached YOURS to help them reach their goals to educate and inspire young people to take road safety action in Belize. These efforts were part of the Bank’s wider all-encompassing road safety project, which focuses on improving Belize’s infrastructure, emergency response, enforcement and education.
YOURS realized this mission by establishing a strong partnership with the government, universities, youth groups and media and to train 34 young facilitators over two years. We trained two cohorts, one in 2014 – one in 2015, and took young leaders from Belize through the full YOURS interactive workshop experience. These facilitators successfully trained a further 2000+ youth in road safety by the end of 2015.
Since then, the youth have reached over 3000 young people in school trainings as well as created a selection of well-produced, catchy and culturally relevant interventions such as radio spots, tv adverts, public service announcements (PSAs) and a range of other creative outputs. The group became registered organization BYRS – Belizean Youth for Road Safety and have continued to promote road safety in the country.
Their latest video is called ‘Reach the Light’ and is about raising awareness of how people approach traffic lights. It seems like a very basic concept, however, in many low and middle-income countries, road safety good practice must be reiterated. In other parts of the world such as in high-income countries, this road safety culture building has taken place over several decades. In Belize, it is the young people setting the trends.
Caption: The Belizean Youth 4 Road Safety in collaboration with Belize Road Safety Initiative and Sol Belize proudly presents, “Reach the Light” by Yung Proti-Jay aka “The Trafficman”. This is a second video to the first one, but it takes place at night and focuses on different driving attitudes and behaviors when at a Traffic light. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to everyone who made this video a reality despite the fact that we had to be dodging the weather . Like we always say ,road safety is everybody’s business . Lets all be courteous road users for a better future. Please like and share. #BYRS #Trafficman
Caption: The Belizean Youth For Road Safety in collaboration with SOL Belize along with the Belize Road safety Initiative Proudly presents, “MY Helmet” by Yung Proti-Jay AKA The Trafficman. This is an educational music video that emphasizes the importance of using both motorcycle and Bicycle helmets and their different parts. We would like to say a special thank you to Mr. Delroy Thompson and Yung Proti-Jay for a job well done with the song production and all those who directly and indirectly assisted to make this video production a reality. #MY #HELMET #BYRS
These videos are another example of how youth culture, intertwined with support and creativity can raise awareness of pertinent social issues such as road safety.