Many will remember 2020 as the year when humanity faced the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus had a massive impact on all of us. On how we work, learn and meet. It also had a large influence on how we traveled, we realized, as never before that liveable streets are more crucial than ever as we respond to COVID-19.
The COVID-19 pandemic is demonstrating the urgency of sharing roads more equitably, encouraging walking and cycling, and keeping young people safe on their journeys.
In 2020 we were also horrified by the act of injustice and violence that led to the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, USA. We can’t be silent as a youth organization that fundamentally stands for diversity and equality.
Embedded in all our activities and principles, we welcome people of all colors, genders, races, religions and groups.
We stand as a community that will not remain silent and will continue our own efforts to review and take action to ensure non-discriminatory practices. Our youth mobilization approaches and evidence-based actions reflect our commitment to equity of participation and protection.
This statement was followed by the adoption of our Diversity Policy.
I will also remember 2020 when close to 200 youth leaders from more than 70 countries made history at the 2nd World Youth Assembly for Road Safety in Sweden. At this event, the Global Youth Statement for Road Safety was adopted, after a large youth consultation with more than 1500 young people around the world. This led to the successful launch of the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety in July 2020.
I will also remember 2020 when close to 200 youth leaders from more than 70 countries made history at the 2nd World Youth Assembly for Road Safety in Sweden. At this event, the Global Youth Statement for Road Safety was adopted, after a large youth consultation with more than 1500 young people around the world. This led to the successful launch of the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety in July 2020.
Finally, I need to thank the entire YOURS family: from the passionate volunteers at the Youth Advisory Board, the amazing and professional staff to the brilliant Supervisory Board members. Under stressful and very difficult circumstances we have delivered probably the best year in terms of activities in the history of YOURS. I am once again proud and humbled to be part of this team.
Floor Lieshout Executive Director
Finally, I need to thank the entire YOURS family: from the passionate volunteers at the Youth Advisory Board, the amazing and professional staff to the brilliant Supervisory Board members. Under stressful and very difficult circumstances we have delivered probably the best year in terms of activities in the history of YOURS. I am once again proud and humbled to be part of this team.
The Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety is hosting an online event this coming Friday, August 13 at 3 pm CET to commemorate International Youth Day entitled “No more youth tokenism”. The session will be an artistic and interactive session that will give different sectors and stakeholders to talk about meaningful youth participation, what it means, and how it can be actively implemented.
International Youth Day, formalized by the United Nations, draws attention to the challenges and issues young people face around the world. This year’s theme is “Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health”. The theme aims to highlight that the success of global and even local efforts such as these would not be achieved without the meaningful participation of youth.
The session, “No more youth tokenism”, will feature partners and organizations who actively and meaningfully engage with young people, involving them in all stages of the decision-making process. It will also feature young leaders who are taking real action in their communities focused on efforts like road safety, health, climate, and inequalities.
The event will also be an official Spotlight session at the Youth Lead Innovation Festival organized by the Office of the UN Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth. Get involved with International Youth Day and make your voices heard! Sign up for the event today!
To help improve road safety across Africa, and with the support of the FIA Foundation, iRAP is proud to announce grants to support 60 road safety professionals from low and lower-middle-income countries to build their capability to use the iRAP methodology.
iRAP Global Programme Director Greg Smith said more than 90 per cent of road fatalities occur in low- and middle-income countries and Africa is particularly hard hit.
“Over 19,000 people are killed every day in low- and middle-income Africa and injury is an additional hidden burden,” he said.
According to iRAP’s Vaccines for Roads Big Data Tool, it is likely that some 194 people suffer spinal injuries including paralysis, 1,589 people are left with brain injuries and 20 loose limbs in road crashes at a cost of USD$247 million – every day. With road traffic crashes now the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5–29 years, the aim is to empower young professionals with the best skills and knowledge – creating a better future for their community.
“Road trauma is a crippling burden borne by families and communities,” Mr Smith said, “Improving capacity to manage road infrastructure safety is a critical step in eliminating high-risk roads and saving lives. We believe it is critically important to support young engineers and give them the opportunity to learn about safer roads and the iRAP methodology. We have created categories specifically for the under 29-year-old professionals to help support and benefit them,’ he added.
The Global Status Report on Road Safety published in 2018 states that progress to save lives on roads is evident in the use of the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP) methodology and the star rating tool for road networks.
By helping to build the capacity of professionals in low and lower-middle-income countries to use the iRAP methodology, the Training and Accreditation grants are a tangible contribution towards supporting the achievement of the Decade of Action for Road Safety goal to halve the number of road deaths and injuries by 2030 and the United Nations Global Road Safety Performance Targets. Target 3 states: “By 2030, all new roads achieve technical standards for all road users that take into account road safety, or meet a three-star rating or better”; and Target 4 states: “By 2030, more than 75% of travel on existing roads is on roads that meet technical standards for all road users that take into account road safety”.
Successful grant recipients will:
Gain access to all iRAP online courses for a period of 12 months;
Be eligible to apply for accreditation within the first 6 months;
Those that gain accreditation, be eligible for accreditation renewals for the following 2-year period.
The courses include content on-road surveys, road attribute coding, analysis and reporting and star rating for designs. From there, successful recipients can also gain advanced knowledge on how to use the iRAP ViDA software to perform road assessment projects.
The Grant Scheme was announced on the final day of the World Bank and iRAP helping save lives in Africa – BIGRS 2020-25 webinar series which attracted more than 1,160 registrations from 112 countries for the free event.
For further questions, please contact iRAP Training and Accreditation Coordinator Alessandra Francoia via email: training@irap.org
Last Friday, July 16, YOURS – Youth for Road Safety Communications Officer Maolin Macatangay leads the session on Road Safety and Road Traffic Injuries during the Online Asia Pacific Regional Meeting (APRM) under the IFMSA – International Federation of Medical Students Associations. The APRM is part of the annual regional meetings that strengthen the link between the IFMSA students to promote the development of new projects at a regional scale.
IFMSA Regional Meetings IFMSA holds regional meetings for its members that take place every year and are hosted by at least one National Member Organization (NMO). The IFMSA Regional Meetings are available for the members of the IFMSA. It is announced by the Organizing Committees on the IFMSA Servers and is preceded by a pre-regional meeting.
The 2021 Online Asia Pacific Regional Meeting ran from July 14 to July 21. The theme for this year’s meeting was This Information or Disinformation: Our Fear of the Solution. IFMSA Regional Leader for the Asia Pacific, Matthew Chow, talked about the community within the region that helped bolster efforts of the IFMSA in public health.
“As youth, we must have the courage to really believe that we can offer perceptive insights into what is happening and initiate these conversations that, at times, maybe hard.” – Matthew Chow
Road Safety and Road Traffic Injuries Session During the session on road safety, Ms. Macatangay talked about how road safety is the leading killer of young people worldwide and how young people from low to middle-income countries are often the most affected.
Apart from talking about road safety, the discussion also covered what young people are doing to combat the road safety crisis through the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety. The discussion covered how the Coalition is supporting young people in efforts to localize road safety efforts in their region.
During the session, it was emphasized that engaging young people are the key to achieve the SDG targets on road safety and for successful meaningful engagement and involvement in local and global public health and development efforts. “Meaningful youth engagement is both the means and the ends for sustained development”.
Be part of the youth and road safety movement by joining the Coalition!
The #ArtforRoadSafety challenge is now on its third and last week featuring Senegal’s first female graffiti artist, Dieynaba Sidibé (Zeinixx). She is known internationally for her mural work empowering women. For the #ArtforRoadSafety challenge, she focuses her message on slowing down emphasizing the fact that that it helps prevent and avoid fatal road crashes.
Through artistic intervention, the #ArtforRoadSafety challenge encourages young people to advocate for road safety in their areas and communities in exciting and creative ways. Zeinixx is one of the three African artists and influencers who are creating content to raise awareness on road safety issues around speed limits and proper helmet use.
Zeinixx, our last featured artist for the #ArtforRoadSafety challenge focuses her message on the importance of slowing down. Her message is “Save lives: Slow down”. To get this message across, she used a public space to display her graffiti which displays the number “30” along with the phrase “Daw ndank! Dal ndank!”.
The “30” sign is a nod to the theme of the 6th UN Global Road Safety Week which was Streets for Life. It encouraged leaders to advocate and implement 30 km/h speed limits to create greener, healthier, and more livable communities.
To participate in this week’s challenge, you will need to recreate or reinterpret Zeinixx’s graffiti. Follow these instructions to join: (1) Conceptualize artwork that reinterprets or reproduces Zeinixx’s graffiti, (2) Draw your concept! You can draw it, sketch it, paint it, or create it digitally. Be creative and have fun!, (3) Take a picture of your artwork or record a video of yourself creating it, (4) Post the artwork in your channels and tag the Coalition, and (5) Use the hashtags #ArtforRoadSafety, #StreetsforLife and #Love30.
Every week since 6 July, the Coalition featured different artists with different challenges to raise awareness on different road safety issues identified by our local artists.
Check out our website to know more about the other artists and the challenges per week.
Last Friday, July 16, the Global Youth Coalition along with UNITE 2030, FIA Foundation, and Restless Development officially launched the Youth Manifesto – a document that presents the main issues and priorities young people face as it relates to the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Youth Manifesto The Youth Manifesto is a product of a polling system that was launched last September 2020 during the 75thUN General Assembly called “nothing for us without us”. The poll asked young people about the biggest challenges they face which were then discussed through the UN75 Dialogue. All these ideas and opinions were gathered in a document that supports the demands of the youth when it comes to the global agenda.
The document emphasizes that young people are often “seen but not heard” stating that this was caused by the lack of meaningful youth engagement on issues that matter, lack of investment, and lack of political will at all levels of decision-making.
The Manifesto presents the everyday struggles of young people around the world, specifically unemployment, quality education, health and well-being, sustainable cities and communities, climate change, and road safety. To address these issues, through the manifesto, young people are demanding advocacy and collaboration, data and investments, and human-centered and community-based actions
Official launch The launch featured different youth leaders from around the world to talk more about Manifesto. The Global Youth Coalition was represented by Thiago Gruner from Brazil, Soumita Chakraborty from India, and Simon Patrick Obi from Nigeria.
Soumita talked about the urgency of addressing the climate crisis and talked about how it connected with road safety. “Climate change is not anymore is an event that will take place in the future, it is already here. I would like to highlight that, among others, transportation is one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions hence climate action definitely needs to be planned for in accordance to sustainable mobility and efforts to de-carbonize the transport sector”.
Simon talked about the importance and necessity of involving young people in policymaking and decision-making efforts saying that “we have the solution”, especially when it comes to the leading killer of young people worldwide; road crashes.
“Just like the way the world rose up to the challenges of COVID, we are also calling the world to rise up to the challenge of road traffic crashes. We’re telling leaders and stakeholders of the world to start engaging young people. Start involving us in policymaking, start reaching out to us and that way, we are able to solve this problem”. – Simon Patrick Obi
The manifesto was written by youth leaders of the different organizations who worked on the manifesto; Thiago Gruner from the Coalition, Shagun Sharma from Restless Development, Linda Ngozwana from UNITE 2030, and Kristeena Monteith from the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth.
