We have some really exciting news! This month, we are getting ready to launch our latest platform, YOURS Academy. Join us in our online launch this May 3, Tuesday, at 3 pm CET to learn more about this latest opportunity. The Academy takes our award-winning in-person training sessions and turns them into an interactive, self-paced learning experience that can be accessed anytime and anywhere in the world.

YOURS Academy is the definitive online learning school for young people who want to learn more about road safety and improve their capacities to advocate for meaningful youth participation in the field. 

With this new platform, we will be able to provide global youth with access to our capacity development resources to apply in your initiatives as road safety leaders and advocates. We designed the Academy to capture your attention and engage you in fun and creative ways so that you can get the most from the materials.

The interactive elements of the Academy vibrantly present the evidence-based papers, reports, best practices, and case studies so that they are easier for you to understand and digest. We offer content that is rooted in the experiences of young people to reflect the world and realities that youth experience every day.

Get to know more about road safety and how you, as a young person, can take action to address one of the biggest global issues that youth face. Be able to use important information and data to increase the impact of the road safety projects and initiatives you want to implement in your country or region.

Join our launch to get a better idea of our platform straight from us and from the experts who helped make sure that the content and resources reflect the most recent and most relevant road safety data. 

The session is only for members of the Global Youth Coalition so be sure to sign up!

JOIN THE YOUTH COALITION 

20 April 2022 – We launched our second policy brief this week, focusing on how Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4: Quality Education connects with road safety and sustainable mobility. The Brief was written by two of our SDG champions, Thiago Gruner (Brazil) and Alex Ayub (Kenya). Check it out if you want to get a better understanding of how road safety and safe mobility influence and affect access to quality education! 

Introducing Policy Brief on Education and Road Safety
Our friends from the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety held a soft launch of the Brief this week through an Instagram LIVE hosted by our regional leader, Jacob Smith. Joining Jacob were Local Actions 2021 Winner Linda Nekesa Masibo and Restless Development Advocacy Manager for Livelihoods and Education Alice Mukashyaka. 

The speakers talked about the right of every young person to have access to quality education and safe journeys on their way to and from school. “The Policy Brief is useful to work within your advocacy work in local communities to promote quality education and safe and secure journey to school,” – Jacob Smith 

Giving context to the discussion, Linda talked about her Local Actions project Moving Safe to Hasselt which is a hybrid road safety education and awareness campaign at Hasselt University for international students. The project aimed to increase road traffic knowledge among students and promote a positive attitude and behavior toward road safety and sustainable modes of transport especially focused on students from Kenya, Tanzania, Cameroon, Albania, Luxembourg, India, and Nigeria who study Transportation Science at the University. 

Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety Youth Leadership Board members Thiago Gruner (Brazil) and Alison Collard de Beaufort will join global delegates in the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Youth Forum 2022. During the Forum, youth leaders from around the world will have the opportunity to engage with government representatives, youth delegates, policymakers, and other relevant stakeholders.

Raising awareness on road safety and its relation to the SDGs
During the Forum, youth will be able to contribute to the review of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, achievements of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the shaping of policy recommendations at the High-Level Political Forum, and other Intergovernmental forums such as the UN Transforming Education Summit, the UN Ocean Conference, the Financing for Development (FfD) Forum, and more. 

Members of the Youth Coalition will talk about road safety and how it connects with the rest of the SDGs, focusing on SDG 5: Gender and Equality and SDG 4: Quality Education. These two areas are discussed through the Policy Briefs created by the Youth Coalition’s SDG Champions.

The Youth Coalition representatives will touch on how gender and education are connected with transport and mobility issues, highlighting that both should be considered to ensure the safety and protection of women, children, students, and other vulnerable road users. 

Sharing the Youth Coalition’s Policy Briefs 
Guided by a Fact Sheet produced by the Youth Coalition, the representatives will also be guided on how to engage decision-makers and other stakeholders to lobby for the meaningful involvement of young people in all stages of decision-making, policymaking, and project management. 

Apart from the Fact Sheet, the Youth Coalition representatives will also be guided by some of our Policy Briefs. The first one is the SDG 5 Policy Brief on Gender Equality and Road Safety and the second is the soon-to-be-launched Brief on SDG 4: Education. 

The latest Brief will be launched this week, 20 April at 5 pm CET, through an Instagram LIVE in the Youth Coalition’s account. The session will explore the relationship between road safety and quality education, focusing on ensuring the safe journeys of students to and from school. These points will be raised and emphasized during sessions throughout the ECOSOC Youth Forum. 

If you want to find out more, join our Instagram LIVE happening this Wednesday. See you there!

FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM

Last week, April 8, YOURS – Youth for Road Safety Communications Manager Maolin Macatangay joined the AIP Foundation in their Head’s Up webinar series focused on youth participation in road safety. The session sought to share information, knowledge, and tools around youth and road safety as well as discuss and disseminate good practices when it comes to youth engagement at local, regional, and global levels.

Empowering youth through the Youth Coalition 
During her intervention, Mao talked about the tangible efforts YOURS continues to apply to meaningfully engage and involve young people. She first highlighted the organization’s vision of seeing a world where no young person dies on the world’s roads. For this, she emphasized how young people needed to be included in all levels of policymaking, decision-making, and project management.

She cites the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety as one of YOURS’ key projects that bring together the services of the organization in terms of providing young people with resources, capacity development, partnership opportunities, and a platform to unite.

The Youth Coalition currently has over 900 members from 104 countries worldwide. Through the Youth Coalition, youth leaders are able to receive funding, mentorship, capacity development opportunities, and access to partners in order to implement road safety projects through its Local Actions initiative.

Mao invited the different stakeholders and participants to start trusting young people and seeing them more as partners rather than beneficiaries. “YOURS – Youth for Road Safety continuously works to create a world where young people do not die on the world’s roads. The best way to do this is to meaningfully engage and involve young people in all stages of project management and decision-making. We believe that young people have the abilities, commitment, and passion to energize the road safety movement across the world. It’s time we see young people not just as victims of road crashes but as assets who can help end the senseless loss of lives on the roads.”

AIP Head’s Up session
The AIP Foundation Head’s Up campaign is a call for students from different regions in Southeast Asia to get involved in promoting the campaign culture among young motorbike drivers.

In Asia, motorbikes are one of the most popular modes of transport for young people. Through the campaign, AIP Foundation wants to ensure the safety of young people who often use motorbikes as modes of transport.

The campaign is looking to raise awareness on how motorbike helmets protect the wearer’s head from severe forms of traumatic brain injuries. This is supported by the data explaining how data reduces the risk of head injury by at least 45%, brain injury by 33%, facial injury by 27%, and fatal injuries by 29%.

Mr. Greig Craft, President of FIA Region II (Asia Pacific) shared, “as countries in the developing world continue to experience rapid economic shifts and turn to motorized mobilization, road crashes will continue to harm our innocent people, especially children and young adults. Substandard helmets – which offer zero head protection – continue to plague our local markets, killing and maiming our loved ones. This is as unethical as selling fake medicines. Through the efforts of organizations like AIP Foundation, FIA and FIA Foundation, the world is understanding that there are solutions.”

MORE ABOUT THE HEAD’S UP CAMPAIGN

4 April 2022 – YOURS – Youth for Road Safety through the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety has launched its latest art campaign called the #ClaimingOurSpace campaign. The campaign will use art and other forms of creative expression to capture the voices of young people in road safety and highlight why they should be meaningfully engaged when it comes to matters around road safety and sustainable mobility.

Youth claiming their space 
Young people from around the world are claiming their space within the global road safety community and as part of the global agenda in preparation for the High-Level Meeting on Road Safety happening in New York this June 2022. Road traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for young people aged 15 to 29. Despite this,  youth are rarely included in decision-making and project management efforts to address these issues. 

YOURS and the Youth Coalition are firm believers in the power of young people to lead change and energize the road safety movement. The #ClaimingOurSpace campaign will enable young people to show local and global leaders the energy, creativity, and solutions youth can offer to help solve the road safety crisis.

“When it comes to road safety, as youth, we are now officially recognized as stakeholders in the Global Plan for the Decade of Action. The next step is to start seeing this implemented in real life, on a country and city-level. I would like to see my peers taking part in this campaign to show decision-makers that we are ready to join forces. I invite you to support us in echoing our message!” – Sana’a Khasawneh, member of the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety.

Art and road safety
The #ClaimingOourSpace campaign will be divided into two phases. The first will take place from the 4th to the 15th of April and will be a call for action for young people to get involved by sending in a power pose and a message for local and global leaders. 

The campaign invites members to send in a “power pose” to show that they are rising to the challenge of addressing global road safety issues that affect them and their peers. The pose shows that they are claiming their space and are demanding to be included in efforts to curb road crashes, locally and globally. 

Last week, 9 March, Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety member Kenneth Mulinde joined an official side event during the African Youth SDG Summit, Africa’s largest youth forum on the Sustainable Development Goals. The event was hosted by the United Nations Road Safety Fund (UNRSF). The session was all about the projects the different organizations were implementing to ensure safe and sustainable mobility within their countries and sectors.

Representative organizations
The panel was composed of diverse speakers from the African region. The panelists include Bunmi Papoola-Mordi from TotalEnergies Nigeria, Claire Louise Sterngold from the YE! Community, Damiilola Olokesusi from Shuttlers, Rick Rapa Thomson from SafeBoda, and Kenneth Mulinde from the Youth Coalition. 

The different speakers touched on different opportunities for young people around entrepreneurship and road safety. During his opening statement, Jean Todt from the United Nations Special Envoy for Road Safety explained how road safety enables opportunities for young people. “Youth Entrepreneurs for Road Safety by the International Trade Center and the United Nations Road Safety Fund is an innovative way for youth to improve road safety using business solutions”. 

Nneka Henry shared how TotalEnergies are providing young leaders with similar opportunities through Start Upper, a project that supports young African Entrepreneurs in the creation of innovative startups to create positive impacts in their communities.

Art, youth, and road safety
During his intervention, Kenneth talked about how art can be used to mobilize and energize the youth movement for road safety.  To emphasize this point, Kenny shared how the Youth Coalition engages young people around the world through art and other creative mediums. For instance, one of the Youth Coalition campaigns, the Art for Road Safety challenge, used street art and dance to raise awareness around road safety and mobility issues in Africa. 

He also discussed how he and his team from Youth Arts Movement Uganda implements his Local Actions project “Be Road Smart” utilizes art to highlight the road safety situation African women face when they commute and take public transport. “Art is used to communicate messages and to break down theories and literature. We turn these messages into images. At the Youth Coalition, art and creativity have been at the center of our programs”

Check out the full panel by watching the session!

WATCH AFRICAN SDG YOUTH SUMMIT SIDE EVENT