Here at YOURS, we are always looking for ways to empower young people to speak out about road safety issues and give them an interntational platform to voice their views and opinions. We are very excited to announce that Mr Brian Bilal from Uganda, an active member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and self confessed ‘public health addict’ is joining YOURS as a regular fortnightly/monthly columnist to give his opinions on the road safety situation in the African region.
Brian Bilal Mwebaze, a national of Uganda will be joining YOURS to give an international audience to his views on the road safety situation in Africa as well as top tips on how to work more effectively for road safety. Brian has a youthful and engaging tone and has been writing about his work in road safety and public health concerns on his blog. We loved his candid style so much that we thought it would be a fantastic idea to give Brian a regular column at YOURS!
Brian’s Biography
Brian K M. Bilal better known by his first name *Brian* is a 25 year old Public Health Youth Specialist, with a high zeal and zap in youths participation and involvement in community, national and international matters of Youth Sexual & Reproductive Health, Environment and his all time passion Road Safety and First Aid. Brian has been in the road safety arena since 2000 as an adolescent when his father survived a fatal motor accident but sustained a left leg disability and eye sight loss.
He joined and headed the local school Red Cross group which experience would help him be appointed while at Mbarara University of Science & Technology as the ‘Road Safety Campus Coordinator’- a very prestigious position that saw him plan and implement a number of road safety projects in the 6 public campuses in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya. He won the East Africa Road Safety Campus Youth Award. His achievements were recognized by the International Red Cross through the Uganda Red Cross Society which sponsored him to be trained as an Emergence Medical Technician-Intermediate/ Road Safety Trainer at the famous Magen David Adome, Israel. He would later come back on an exchange programme to Denmark under the Danish Red Cross Youth where he was part of the team that implemented the ‘School to School Project’ in 4 Danish Schools and 4 Ugandan Schools: an experience that helped him understand and appreciate road safety in a developing and developed country
Brian is also the vice president of the African Youth Network on Road Safety-a network of 30+ youth organisations working on road safety in Africa. On 11.11.11, he was voted the Communications Officer for the Africa NGO Network on Road Safety:-a network of national organisations working in road safety arena in Africa.
Currently the Public Health Youth Advisor for the Red Cross, and Youth representative to Uganda National Safety Working Group Brian advises on what he calls ‘The 3 Women of His Life’ which is First Aid & Road safety programmes, youth sexual and reproductive health programmes and the environment as regards to design, monitoring and evaluation and needless to mention, advocacy
While not reading and writing about and to ‘‘The 3 Women of His Life’, Brian is a freestyle soccer player, rice glutton, a certified movie addict, factual and ardent fan of ‘Take That Rock Band’. Brian also has a BSc., A Master of Public Health and is almost Doctorate Student of Public Health at University of Sydney.
YOURS is looking forward to publishing Brian’s regular column so stay tuned and be sure to check his blog out shortly!