Around two weeks ago, the world experienced the global spectacular sporting event that is the Olympic Games. While for just under two weeks the world watched the very best in sports taking their place in the hall of fame, some athletes have used their Olympic medalling to step up from their accomplishments to talk about the pressing global concerns facing young people; road traffic crashes.

For athletes, the chance to compete in the name of their home country is an honour in itself but to walk away with the top spot and enter your country with gold emblazoned around your neck is not only a personal triumph but a moment of immense national pride.

So when David Rudisha (pictured above) broke the world record for 800 meter race in the London 2012 Olympics last month, it goes without saying that he became a national hero. What is more, Rudisha did this for the second time! For nearly 13 years, the 800-meter world record belonged to Wilson Kipketer (1:41.11) of Denmark. It seemed practically unbreakable, until David Rudisha has bettered it twice in the span of just eight days. At 21 years of age, the Kenyan, who was still competing as a decathlete in 2004, has created track and field history. 

Now David Rudisha, as a role model for thousands of young Kenyans aspiring for athletic prosperity has expressed his concern at the number of road crashes killing youths in Kenya and beyond the borders in Africa.

Olympic champion and new world record holder David Rudisha has called for action to save lives on the roads in Kenya and around the world. Rudisha won the gold medal for the 800m at the London Olympics on 9 August 2012 breaking the world record. He joins double Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser Pryce and a host of other top athletes in giving their support to the Zenani Mandela campaign and the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety.

Thanks to the amazing work the Make Roads Safe campaign does to bring high profile personalities into the supporting consortium of road safety enthusiasts, a youtube video was released during the Olympics. 

Jamaican Shelley-Ann Fraser, the 2012 Olympic 100m champion and 200m silver medalist, had earlier given her support to the Zenani Mandela campaign, calling for more protection for children on the world’s roads. Other athletes at London 2012 supporting the campaign include: Olympic finalist Kaliese Spencer and Nesta Carter (Jamaica), Gillian Sanders and Rene Kalmer (South Africa) and Edna Kiplagat (Kenya).

The athletes have been deterimed to raise awareness for road safety globally particularly as they come from countries which are confronting severe road injury crises.

You can read more about athletes’ role in promoting road safety at the Make Road Safe wesbite here.

As YOURS plans its Capacity Development Program in Kenya to train young people of road safety issues in late November, we are hoping that Kenyan celebrities and those of high regard to Kenyan youth will help us champion the cause to reduce road crashes in Kenya.

Late last year, YOURS initiated its second global road safety awareness campaign; the Embrace Life Campaign. This unique photography competition brought together over 50 countries from around the world to participate in our awareness raising project illustrating how young people ’embrace life’ and consequently commit to road safety to preserve it. Now, after we selected our winners back December 2011, a project on the ground has been implemented by the winners of the Embrace Life photo competition with support from YOURS.

The Embrace Life Campaign had a simple motivation behind it, to remind young people why we love life, the people, the things, the memories and the moments that inspire us to live our lives to its full, once acknowledging these special aspects of life, young people were asked to simple keep these dreams, goals, loved ones and passions safe by committing to road safety.

The task was easy, take a picture of yourself embracing life and tell us why you commit to road safety. As a small incentive, YOURS offered the best, most creative, most inspiring pictures a 1000 Euro prize to initiate their own road safety project in their own local area. After receiving hundreds of pictures from the four corners of the world, YOURS along with its specially chosen judges selected the best entries and the 1000 Euro prize was granted after a strong project plan was formed.

We are no strangers to the fact that a well executed grass roots projects requires preparation, planning, partnership and hard work which is why nearly seven months after we announced our winner; Ms Sheila Atieno and Ms Daphne Kemunto from Kenya, their unique project has finished its implementation stage just a few weeks ago.

In a special ‘on the ground project’, YOURS’ funding for the project built a partnership between globally renowned road safety organization Amend, based in Tanzania to run a programme to ‘train the facilitators’ from Kenyan organizations; Youths for Road Safety Kenya (YOURS-KENYA), Usalama Watch Initiative and ASIRT-Kenya. This formed part of a training for Amend’s See and Be Seen programme to train the facilitators from these organizatons who could then train the young people in the above pictures to be safer on their trips to and from school.

The objectives of the training were to:

1. To train eight participants and equip them with right method of providing Road Safety Education.
2. To provide Road Safety Education to two schools.
3. To create awareness on Road Safety.

In a report Amend stated that Kenya has put a lot of investment in building and improving its road infrastructure systems. This is in line with vision 2030 and the National agenda. The construction of the means of transport allows all the road users faster movement. Unfortunately most of the constructed roads and even the older ones are not user friendly. There are no clear Road Safety education on how to use the, the roads are not well marked and traffic lights are not respected. The most unfortunate of it all is that most of the children or younger road users find it very difficult to cross these roads because they are not equipped with the right information and behavior practice.,

The training provided both the participants and the pupils with an opportunity to learn on the best ways of saving lives and especially through education. Everyone who attended the meeting felt it was a worthwhile and of great success. They all made a commitment to spread the ‘good news’ to as many people as they can reach. The head teachers of the two respective schools were very happy and welcomed us back any time for further training and participation.

Manpreet Darroch, YOURS’ Communications Officer who designed the Embrace Life Campaign said, ‘From a worldwide campaign that brought together hundreds of young people who pledged and commited to road safety, we have now implemented an on the ground project with the winner of the Embrace Life photo competition. When we saw these photos last year, Daphne and Sheila’s contribution capturing these precious young lives really made us want to give something back to these children. Now through this See and Be Seen program, they will be equipped with the skills to be safer, I am thrilled to see success of the project’.

YOURS will be running an interview with project facilitators from Amend and our CORE Group Representative Ms Sheila Atieno who won the Embrace Life Photo competition to share more about their experience. We congratulate this project and as the freshly trained facilitators run their workshops with young people in Kenya, we are hoping that we can save lives of a generation of young people to come.

Our North American CORE Group Representative Ms Jennifer Heatley gave us an update of the latest goings on in North America with regards to youth and road safety action. In her growing network of North American road safety organization, one school involved in NOYS’ Act Out Loud programme submitted an article to inform the rest of us on road safety action taking place in the region!

Did you know that summer is the deadliest season for teen drivers? In July 2010 alone, we lost 364 youth ages 15-20 in traffic crashes. Statistics like these are devastating and eye opening. It’s apparent that teen motor vehicle crashes is an epidemic that needs to be addressed. Luckily, organizations like National Organizations for Youth Safety (NOYS) are working with teens towards a solution. To encourage youth to gather together and be safe on the roads this summer, NOYS launched programs to encourage teens to “Act Out Loud for the Safest Summer Ever” with the support of Bridgestone and The Allstate Foundation.

A Business Professionals of America (BPA) chapter at John A. Dubiski Career High School, an energetic student-led team located in Grand Prairie, TX, showed their activism and support for youth traffic safety by participating in Act Out Loud, a teen traffic safety competition that gives high schools the opportunity to spread awareness, help change behavior, and work to decrease traffic fatalities and injuries through peer-led youth traffic safety activities and compete for prizes totaling more than $90,000.

Dubiski also participated in Act Out Loud for the Safest Summer Ever school rally program, where they were chosen as one of seven high schools around the nation to lead teen driver safety rallies on May 8, 2012. The school received toolkits and a stipend to assist them in implementing the traffic safety activities for these programs.

For the Act Out Loud contest, BPA Dubiski completed three activities: a SAFE-TEE Shirt Design Contest, a Creative Sign Contest, and a Facebook Yearbook Application. The school successfully completed all three activities and was chosen from more than 300 schools to receive a Judges Choice Award in the amount of $2,000.

BPA Dubiski created a fantastic plan for the school rally event and worked with community leaders to get businesses and organizations, including AT&T, HOSA, the student council and local city government, involved in the school’s efforts. The team worked hard to promote the rally, including promotion at a workshop at the National BPA Conference in Chicago. Their rally activities included pledge booths, food booths, impaired driving demonstrations, texting and driving, Click It or Ticket campaigns, and informational booths sponsored by Texas Trust, insurance companies, and automotive companies. Police motorcycles, fire trucks, and ambulances were all displayed at the event. Over 1,500 students attended the rally and over 3,000 pledges were signed to have the Safest Summer Ever. BPA Dubiski developed an exciting video that captured highlights of the school rally. Dubiski is one example if the hundreds of youth-led activities.

For more information or to get involved in NOYS programs for 2013 Global Youth Traffic Safety Month, visit www.noys.org or send an email to info@noys.org.

We are proud to present the official video showreel from the 4th European Road Safety Day in Nicosia, Cyprus which had a special focus on youth involvement in road safety. In addition, YOURS includes its presentation focusing on the active involvement of young people in road safety globally. Check out the videos here!

YOURS was asked by Reaction Cyprus to film its official video showreel capturing the key events of the 4th European Road Safety Day which took place in late July in Nicosia, Cyprus. Our Communications Officer Manpreet Darroch shot and produced both videos available to view here. At the conference, we at YOURS ran live updates from the action in Nicosia as it happened. You can read a live update stream from YOURS that took place on the day here.

On the 25th July 2012, young people from across Europe came together for the 4th European Road Safety Day in Nicosia, Cyprus. The day focused on a range of pressing road safety issues facing young people across Europe and was hosted by the Cyprus Presidency of the European Union 2012. Read the Cypriot Governmental press release and details of the Youth Conference on following day.

Our videos include a montage of the events of the 4th ERSD which include testimonials from some youth delegates from across Europe. They concluded that the day brought a renewed focus on key risk factors relating to young people and road safety and offered a chance for decision makers to hear the views of youth representatives as input for future policy making. The day paved the way for the involvement of young people in road safety solutions.

The interactive workshops of the latter part of the day enabled an open forum for young people and key European policy makers to discuss issues relating to  enforcement, policing and road safety, life long education and training for young people and an addressal of emerging key risk factors relating to young people such as disctracted driving, two-wheel usage, drug driving and a reduction of alcohol consumption.

In a separate video we showcase YOURS’ presentation from our Director Floor Lieshout which firstly looks at young people’s involvement in road safety in terms of ‘what can be done for young people’ and secondly ‘what young people can do themselves’ in terms of road safety action, improvements, initiatives and progress. Mr Lieshout then gives a focus on YOURS’ contribution to the active involvement of young people in road safety in the work we due including our three pillars of action and our new publication and capacity development workshops.