The Amends’ safe school area program provides simple, targeted infrastructure measures – including footpaths, speed humps, bollards, and zebra crossings – that decrease vehicle speeds and separate child pedestrians from traffic. They recently completed a multiyear impact evaluation: the program reduced injury rates by more than 26% and lessened the severity of the injuries that did occur.

In July 2017, we trained 20 young leaders from across the Limpopo Province in South Africa. These leaders were selected for their influence and leadership in their communities; their linkages and access to hard-to-reach communities such as those in townships and their passion for social justice and change.

In partnership with the Global Road Safety Partnership in South Africa (GRSP ZA) and generously funded by the socially responsible company Michelin, the programme took place over 5 days in Bela-Bela, South Africa.

After being rigorously trained through an intensive information packed workshop, these leaders became the first cohort of South African Youth Ambassadors for Road Safety. They were trained in a range of topics including road safety in South Africa, why crashes happen, why young people are at risk, factors surround gender, risk factors including speed, distracted driving, drink and drug driving and seatbelts as well as lifelong skills such as presentations skills, facilitation skills and road safety messaging.

A year on, these Ambassadors reconvened in Polokwane, South Africa (July 2018) to reflect on their achievements, address the challenges they faced and gain new skills to improve their work as Ambassadors and take their road safety activities to the next level.

Follow Up Training
In collaboration with the management at GRSP as well the Ambassadors themselves, we devised a training programme to address key achievements during their first 12 months as Ambassadors as well as identifying the new skills they would need moving forward. The training took place in Polokwane, South Africa from 3-5 July 2018.

The training focusing on topics including: Looking Back – Our Achievements; Looking Back – Our Challenges; Leadership; Fundraising; Advocacy for Youth Issues; Communication and Looking Forward – Our Action Plans. The training enabled the Ambassadors to improve what they have been doing, share their work with one another to energize their work.

Looking back at their achievements, the Ambassadors have been very busy. From working on roads leading to townships, to school visits across whole districts, the Ambassadors have been spreading the word of road safety across Limpopo.

The Ambassadors, who represent the 5 municipal districts in Limpopo have been working in teams to conduct localized and tailored messaging according to the need of the community.

For example, in the Capricorn District, Ambassadors run a drunk driving campaign over the Easter Weekend; in Sekhukhune, Ambassadors successfully lobbied the local municipality to install speed humps around schools and conducted scholar patrols to enable young people to get to school safety, navigating through traffic; in Vhembe, Ambassadors run social media awareness campaigns using their local leadership status to run “live streams” talking about the importance of road safety and sharing skills such as avoiding distracted driving to be safer road users.

An action taken by many of the Ambassadors across the region was talking at “After-Tears” events. After-Tears is a uniquely South African phenomena where after a funeral, guests will drink heavily, play loud music and celebrate the life of their loved one. Unfortunately, during many of these events, young people tend to drink heavily and drive home; our Ambassadors used the After-Tears events to formally address road safety and the importance of not driving home drunk. These talks had particularly prevalence in Mopani.

In Vhembe, Ambassadors run road safety sessions in 11 out of 14 schools in the municipality reaching approximately 600 young people with an aim to reach all schools by the end of the year. The Ambassadors used their newly acquired facilitator skills to run workshops with the students away from the traditional classroom style and in a more engaging, interactive manner.

The Ambassadors continued to reflect on some of the challenges they faced in their work and collectively addressed these challenges as group. The group were aided in building strategies to address challenges such as a lack of resources, resistance from the community and poor road infrastructure.

READ THE FULL COUNTRY PROFILE

South Africans pay a high toll for road traffic crashes, especially amongst young males aged 14-35. In July 2017, we partnered with the Global Road Safety Partnership South Africa (GRSP ZA), the Government of South Africa (Ministry of Health and Transport) and the Michelin Corporate Foundation to deliver the first Youth Ambassadors for Road Safety Training in the country. 20 young leaders, selected for their activism and standing in their communities joined YOURS in Limpopo Province to be trained on road safety knowledge and peer education methods.

Michelin, in their ground breaking approach to global road safety, and whom are long standing founding member of YOURS funded the programme (through the Michelin Corporate Foundation) to equip these young people with the skills they needed to reach out to their communities and raise road safety consciousness across society. The project was organized by GRSP ZA in collaboration with the Provincial Government of Limpopo and the Department for Transport.

We will be back in South Africa next week (4-5-6 July) to run a refresher training with our South African Ambassadors. In 2017 we trained 20 youth leaders from across Limpopo Province, South Africa. Since the last training, these Ambassadors have been out in their communities running road safety workshops, campaigns and spreading positive road safety messages across the province.

This training will reflect on what the Ambassadors have achieved already, some challenges they may have faced as well as building their skills in leadership, communications, fundraising, advocating for road safety with youth and strategizing their future work.

Check out the video to see the vibrancy and energy of the South African Ambassadors in action!

We will be live-tweeting and sharing information from the training on our Twitter page as well as report on our website after the training.

About YOURS Workshops
We use our years of expertise in workshop delivery  to develop the capacities of young people in the field of road safety. With global experiences from Belize, Cambodia, Kenya, Niger, Oman, Saint Lucia, South Africa and the USA, YOURS is able to provide youth-friendly, highly interactive and dynamic workshops for young people. These workshops have big impact on the lives of young people are create robust youth action to reduce road traffic crashes amongst 15-29 year olds.

READ MORE ABOUT OUR SOUTH AFRICA TRAINING

OUR PORTFOLIO

We are well into the magical championship that is the FIFA World Cup. The football tournament is the most watched sporting event in modern history and continues to bedazzle and amaze with some of the world’s best players. Whether your country is in the world cup or not, there’s no escaping world cup fever.

There’s another phenomena that often accompanies sporting events like the world cup; excessive drinking. You may find yourself having a beer at odd times in the day, during the day-time matches or drinking more than you usually do midweek for the evening matches. That’s why we are endorsing the message of Somerset Road Safety’s World Cup Campaign: “Avoid a World Cup Penalty by having none for the road”.

You may think you know your limits and how much you can drink while still being safe to drive, however, the likelihood is you’re wrong. You may not realise it but it only takes one alcoholic drink to begin to affect your ability to drive safely, and alcohol can affect you differently depending on a number of factors that include:

• weight
• age
• sex and metabolism (the rate your body uses energy)
• what you’ve eaten recently
• the type and amount of alcohol you’re drinking
• stress levels

It’s also important to remember that alcohol can linger in the blood stream for far longer than you may realise and it’s possible to still be over the legal limit to drive the morning after a night out drinking. In the UK, the system works on ‘units’, knowing units can help but avoiding alcohol all together if driving is the best approach.

In the UK, being caught drinking driving can include the following penalties:

• A minimum 12 month driving ban
• A criminal record
• A hefty fine
• Up to 6 months in prison
• An endorsement on your licence for 11 years

Road Safety GB have designed a set of promo materials to be used during the World Cup including:

• World Cup 2018 – Wall chart
• World Cup 2018 – Score predictor
• World Cup 2018 – Sweepstake

READ MORE ABOUT DRINK DRIVING 

PLEDGE TO BE A ROAD SAFETY CHAMPION