The Global Road Safety Leadership Course led by Johns Hopkins, the International Injury Research Unit, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Global Road Safety Partnership kicks off on 8 May with up to 100 participants from 20 countries all over the world. Our Youth Leadership Board Member Estiara Ellizar, Latin America Regional Leader Ezequiel Naidich, and YOURS – Youth for Road Safety Projects Director Raquel Barrios are among the participants of the Course.

The Global Road Safety Leadership Course builds on different aspects of the participants’ skills as leaders and road safety advocates. It helps develop the capacity to design, advocate for, and implement effective road safety programs and policies at local and global levels.

To facilitate these improvements in knowledge capacity, the Course offers modules on road safety management, safer roads and mobility, safer vehicles, safer road users, post-crash response, and road safety policy and advocacy. 

Prior to the beginning of the Course, the Global Road Safety Leadership Course (GRSLC) Alumni Fellows joined a workshop that provided in-depth sessions that focused on the projects and contributions the fellows will make during the Course. 

Natalie Draisin of the FIA Foundation and Kevin Frick from Johns Hopkins facilitated some of the sessions. They shared some important insights on the importance of building partnerships to inform effective road safety leadership. 

“I am more than excited to start this Global Road Safety Leadership Course as an Alumni Fellow. It’s time to recharge all knowledge on road safety!” – Estiara Ellizar. 

The Course encourages active engagement among a variety of international participants from different road safety settings and backgrounds. The programs and sessions are also delivered through a diverse and experienced faculty that aims to challenge, engage, and inspire global participants.

“I am more than excited to start this Global Road Safety Leadership Course as an Alumni Fellow. It’s time to recharge all knowledge on road safety!” – Estiara Ellizar.

The Course encourages active engagement among a variety of international participants from different road safety settings and backgrounds. The programs and sessions are also delivered through a diverse and experienced faculty that aims to challenge, engage, and inspire global participants.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE ROAD SAFETY LEADERSHIP COURSE

Belize – Last week from the 17th to the 21st of April, Manpreet Darroch and Laura Daniela Gomez of the YOURS Capacity Development Team went to Belize to conduct a “Training of Facilitators” session to train the Belize Youth for Road Safety to become road safety leaders in their region and community. The five-day training session was filled with interactive activities that put the current mobility situation into perspective. 

Nearly a decade ago, YOURS started its first mission to Belize in 2014 to train and empower young leaders in the country on road safety issues in a “Train the Facilitator” approach. 

Back then, Belize’s population stood at around 310,000 inhabitants, the size of a medium town from where I live in the UK. Yet, although having a relatively tiny population, the number of road deaths in the country was stark, at 22.2 per 100,000 placing it high in the Caribbean community as having one of the highest death rates. The sad reality of road traffic crashes being the biggest killer of young people, predominantly young males, was no different in Belize a rapidly growing and rapidly motorizing country.

The task back then was to educate and empower a select group of young leaders to spread road safety knowledge amongst their peers and the population. This was part of a wider systemic approach whereby through a Caribbean Development Bank assistance loan, the Government of Belize was able to improve infrastructure across the notorious George Price Highway (Belize City to Belmopan), improve enforcement by training police officers, improving access to post-crash care through new ambulance and specialist training as well as educating drivers and road users through education.

Our role fell nicely into the latter; to educate a group of 35 activated and inspired young leaders from across the country, namely on the periphery locations of the highway, to work with their communities to raise the profile of road safety and its associated practices; to be safer on the road – wear a seatbelt, don’t drink and drug drive, don’t speed, wear a helmet.

Our Belizean young leaders took their task of reaching young people across the country through their own road safety youth-friendly workshops and amplified it across the country. They reached 3,000 youth in face-to-face workshops in schools and thousands more through expos, festivals, and media appearances. Our very own road safety rapper Sylvian Neal aka the “Traffic Man”, became a national hero, singing anthems on everything road safety from seatbelts to how to navigate a new roundabout.

Then, as the nature of youth work dictates, many of these young people moved on – to study abroad, to professional jobs in other countries, or started families and businesses. Even though they had smashed their targets of reaching youth in Belize, some stuck around and carried the torch of road safety further to be part of the newly formed NGO Belizean Youth for Road Safety (BYRS) and continue action in road safety.

When the first road safety project focusing on the George Price Highway finished in 2016 – a second project was initiated in the country focusing on the Philip Goldson Highway from Belize City to Corozal, the eastern part of the country. This time, instead of having YOURS deliver the next training of facilitators with young people in the surrounding areas of the highway, a group of Master Trainers from BYRS, who were part of the original cohort in Road Safety Project 1.0 took the helm to deliver this training to attract new members to BYRS delivering road safety education. 

And so, we come full circle. Our mission for Capacity Development at YOURS is to ‘leave capacity behind’. Capacity development means just that, to build the skills and knowledge of passionate, talented, and committed young leaders to not rely on international consultants like us but build the skills to no longer need us. After all, this is where sustainability thrives; when communities themselves are skilled and resilient to emulate and improve what we do.

We worked with 6 youth from the original BYRS Group on all the things needed to deliver their own Training of Facilitators; logistics, recruitment, planning, and delivery all the way down to materials and venue. This was all delivered in an online training (during the pandemic no doubt) to gear up these young people to deliver their own training. Luckily for us, we turned much of our in-person road safety learning into self-paced online training via the YOURS Academy, which meant two things; 1) all of the theory parts of the in-person training could be cut in half and delivered online 2) the duration of time needed in the country was cut in half (although nobody minds 2 weeks in the Caribbean, the length of our usual empowerment program training).

In mid-April,  these master trainers absolutely smashed their roles in welcoming a new class of BYRS members, ready to go out and reignite a road safety focus in Belize. In the words of Sylvian Neal aka the Traffic Man ‘We nah want nobody get knock dong” (Creole: loosely meaning – we don’t want anyone to get killed in a road crash) – and that is what BYRS will attempt to achieve in the months ahead as the new youth in BYRS take on the mission to spread road safety awareness to 2000 more young people from Belize City to Corozal. I am so proud of what they have achieved and their nearly decade-long commitment to road safety in Belize. I also love it when something comes full circle, which makes my fifth visit to the beautiful country of Belize even more enjoyable.

While Belize’s population has moderately grown to 410,000 – the beauty of working with such a small population, apart from the beauty of the country itself, is that interventions such as this one can reach a massive amount of people quite quickly and in a short time. We wish our new BYRS members the best of luck in their noble road safety missions and post-pandemic, thank you for reminding me of the power of in-person workshops to lead transformational change on personal and community levels!

READ ABOUT OUR PREVIOUS ACTIVITIES IN BELIZE 

We are happy to welcome our new team member, John Mwikwabe from Kenya, into the YOURS – Youth for Road Safety Team as our project manager for the upcoming Claiming Our Space Campaign. John joined the team earlier this April and will take charge of the strategic planning and implementation of the Global Youth Coalition’s art campaign. Learn more about John by reading on!

John has dedicated nearly two decades to working with young people in various capacities, including orphans and vulnerable children, those struggling with substance addiction, HIV and AIDS, peer education, community mobilization, health campaigns, youth leadership, young people with special needs, and as a departmental head and youth chairperson for the Kenya Red Cross Society in the South Rift Region.

His true passion lies in humanitarian work and helping others, having served as a coordinator for the Kenya Red Cross Society in Naivasha and Nakuru County for over ten years.

In 2012, YOURS trained him as a Road Safety Facilitator, and he used this knowledge to empower young people on risk factors associated with road safety in Kenya as he implemented Global Road Safety 10 Project (RS10 Project), which Bloomberg Philanthropies funded. 

During this time, he provided capacity building on road safety to various groups, including learning institutions, motorbike riders, public service vehicle providers, community first responders in high-risk areas, Traffic Police, local administration, Road Safety stakeholders, and partners.

In addition to his other responsibilities, he was also in charge of Road Traffic Crashes Responses and mitigation, participated in Local and National Road Safety Steering Committees, and collected data on Road Safety Crashes. 

His areas of expertise include Project Management, Communication, Capacity Building, Proposal Writing, Resource Mobilization, Strategic Project Planning, Community Mobilization, and Leadership Training.

Last January, Bornemouth University and volunteer disability activists from East and Central Africa invited different sectors to join the Disability Advocacy in East Asia Project which looks to fuse academic research with practice in the field of disability studies and other related fields. This month, Bournemouth and the Action on Disability and Development (ADD) International led the Youth Disability Advocacy & Research Network Festival.

The Festival was a four-day series of knowledge exchange and capacity development that looks to establish an international network of activists, academics, and practitioners who will work to support the growth of the disability advocacy movement in East and Central Africa.  Our Youth Leadership Board Member, Alex Ayub, attended the event to represent the Youth Coalition.

The first day of the Festival presented “tools for change” that would help activists tackle disability marginalization through digital advocacy. The session was facilitated by knowledge exchange workshops that explored new approaches to communicating advocacy messages and innovating media advocacy. 

Last January, Bornemouth University and volunteer disability activists from East and Central Africa invited different sectors to join the Disability Advocacy in East Asia Project which looks to fuse academic research with practice in the field of disability studies and other related fields. This month, Bournemouth and the Action on Disability and Development (ADD) International led the Youth Disability Advocacy & Research Network Festival.

The Festival was a four-day series of knowledge exchange and capacity development that looks to establish an international network of activists, academics, and practitioners who will work to support the growth of the disability advocacy movement in East and Central Africa.  Our Youth Leadership Board Member, Alex Ayub, attended the event to represent the Youth Coalition.

The first day of the Festival presented “tools for change” that would help activists tackle disability marginalization through digital advocacy. The session was facilitated by knowledge exchange workshops that explored new approaches to communicating advocacy messages and innovating media advocacy.

Delft, Netherlands – Last week, our Executive Director Floor Lieshout and Global Youth Coalition Youth Leadership Board member Oliva Nalwadda joined the annual Delft Road Safety Course (DRSC) in a five-day session that brought together road safety professionals from around the world to take part in the first in-person DRSC since 2019. 

Floor joined  Govert Schermers, Mark King, Gert-Jan Wijlhuizen, Patrick Broeren, Dr. Attila Borsos, Emma MacLennan, Philip Wijers, Henk Stipdonk, and Hilda M. Gomez to talk about different topics on road safety. Some of the key themes of the course include; road infrastructure design, the safety of vulnerable road users, the role of education, training and enforcement, and the implications of automated vehicles on road safety. 

The first day of the course was a refresher for the students attending the session. Course Leaders Govert Schermers and Mark King touched on highlights on the nature of road crashes, the decision-making processes to make roads safer, scientific evidence to support decision-making processes, and the implementation of road safety solutions among others. 

Other sessions of the course include the integration of the Safe System Approach in road design. Course Leader Emma MacLennan shares some important tools for effective road safety interventions, emphasizing the role of local stakeholders and experts when it comes to fundraising and project implementation. 

The third day of the session kicked off with a road trip to DenHaag, Netherlands where the participants visited the SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research. 

SWOV Research sits behind all of the Netherlands’ Road Safety Policy Making, its researchers make the most of new technologies, research methods, and interdisciplinary collaborations to support evidence-based policy that is responsive to the public’s road safety and mobility needs. 

The learners also went on a tour around the city where they paid special attention to sustainable mobility. The tour also allowed the participants to take a look at functional road categories, safe speeds, forgiving roadsides, roundabouts, and integrating active travel infrastructure. 

Floor was the course lecturer on the fourth day of the DRSC. During his intervention, he talked about creating a power map, defined by Harvard Business School as “a visual tool that will help the participants understand who has more or less power in a work environment to help navigate politics and other areas”. 

On the overall reception of the DRSC, Oliva Nalwadda says “The Delft Road Safety Course is a perfect blend of knowledge and practice. As we #RethinkMobility, it is crucial that we empower actors from LMICs to design and implement strategic road safety interventions. By attending the Delft road safety course, I feel refueled and energized to lead the change I want to see on Uganda’s roads. I also had the opportunity to interact with other road safety actors and through experience-sharing exercises, I was able to learn, relearn and borrow several best practices in crash investigations and evidence-based road safety promotion.”

The last day of the DSRC was filled with road safety action plan presentations from the learners who were grouped by region. Throughout the event, participants were given the opportunity to network and share their experiences with their fellow learners. 

You can follow the Delft newsletter for future announcements on upcoming DSRCs.

SIGN UP FOR DSRC NEWSLETTER

20 April, Thursday – The SDG 11 Champions of the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety Alain Ghossein, Oliva Nalwadda, and Stephen Kome Fondzenyuy lead the launch of our latest SDG Policy Brief on road safety and sustainable cities titled “Rethinking Mobility and Road Safety: A Transformative Vision of Youth”, which they wrote and delivered.

The Policy Brief presents the role of road safety in achieving the targets under SDG 11, specifically target 11.2 which looks to provide access to safe, affordable, accessible, and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations (women, children, persons with disabilities, and older persons). 

“Cities are responsible for a large portion of greenhouse gas emissions, with a high proportion of slum dwellers in urban areas not adequately considered in planning processes… Proper road safety is essential for making public areas sustainable and providing safer and more sustainable ways to commute to schools, work, leisure, and access services. There is no sustainable transport and sustainable urban city without road safety and it’s reciprocal” – SDG 11 Policy Brief (Rethinking Mobility and Road Safety: A Transformative Vision of Youth)

The Brief elaborates on the linkages between youth, road safety, and sustainable cities and communities. It also presents key facts and figures that highlight the current situation faced by people as members of the community and as road users when it comes to how they interact with cities, transportation, and mobility. 

In the Brief, the writers emphasized how young people are recognized as the most affected by any sustainability programs and therefore need to be meaningfully consulted and involved. It states, “Young people need to be at the center of any urban sustainable mobility programs. Failing to do so risks creating a society that disregards youth development, leaving them to their fate.”  

Presenting some of the developments made in addressing challenges in the creation of more sustainable cities, the Brief lists significant progress and investment that have been made by United Nations agencies, governments, civil society organizations, and citizens to fast-track the achievement of the objectives to make cities more sustainable, safe, inclusive, and resilient.

The Brief gives examples that are close to home through some of our Local Actions initiative projects that fund and support community-led projects that focus on creating sustainable communities through safe, accessible, and inclusive roads. It used the “Hey, I’m Moving on Two Wheels” project and the “Safe Return to School” project as examples of evidence-based initiatives that implement best practices that can be replicated in other areas of the world. 

We call on youth leaders, global organizations, and other stakeholders to use the Brief in their projects and advocacy work, especially if it’s connected with road safety, tactical mobility, engineering, and other related areas. It also presents recommendations for different organizations such as governments, civil societies, and youth-led organizations should do to further efforts to create safer roads and more sustainable cities. 

DOWNLOAD THE SDG 11 POLICY BRIEF