YOURS Ambassador Aakash featured in The Times of India

YOURS Ambassador Aakash featured in The Times of India

YOURS’ Ambassador for the Post-2015 Agenda Mr Aakash Shah has recently been featured in India’s biggest circular newspaper, The Times of India to bring awareness to his efforts across the world. Aakash joined the YOURS team recently to work on the infuencing the Post-2015 Agenda.

 

 
PUNE: Nineteen-year-old Aakash Shah has been chosen as the Global Ambassador for Post-2015 Development Agenda, by Youth for Road Safety (YOURS), which is part of the UN Road Safety Collaboration. In his role as the global ambassador, Shah is now working towards pushing all 193 permanent missions at the UN to commit to road safety goals set by the intergovernmental organisation and include these in their Post-2015 Development Agenda.
 

One of the goals in the agenda is to halve the number of road deaths by the year 2030. 

The other objective of the advocacy project, which is being led by Shah along with the Global Alliance for Road Safety, is to push permanent missions to attend the second high level conference on road safety.

The meet will take place on November 18 and 19 in Brasilia, Brazil, and include a youth representative in each delegation. The global alliance represents NGOs from 90 countries that deal with road safety and works in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Shah has been working towards road safety since the last three years and is the founder of the youth NGO Action for Pune Development (APD). The NGO’s first project was with the Pune traffic police in 2012.

Shah was also part of UN’s Save Kids Lives campaign during the Road Safety Week in May. He managed to reach out to 8 lakh people across the globe through the campaign, which got people to sign a plea supporting road safety for children as a priority.

“The Child Declaration for Road Safety is a call for action. Children have voiced their thoughts and fears about traveling on roads and experts have summarised measures that must be taken to keep them safe on roads. These measures must become a priority for governments for future development,” says Shah. Read Aakash’s profile here.
APD has been given a grant of $2,000 by an organisation, Youth Service America (YSA), to execute its road safety project. On Septemeber 2, APD will train eight people at YASHADA for the same.
Safety 2016: Call for abstracts is now open!

Safety 2016: Call for abstracts is now open!

The 12th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion – Safety 2016 – will be held from 18-21 September 2016 in Tampere, Finland. Hosted by the Finnish National Institute for health and Welfare (THL) and co-sponsored by the World Health Organization. Safety 2016 is addressing a broad range of violence and injury prevention topics including emerging issues in the field. 

The 12th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion – Safety 2016 – will be held from 18-21 September 2016 in Tampere, Finland. Hosted by the Finnish National Institute for health and Welfare (THL) and co-sponsored by the World Health Organization. Safety 2016 is addressing a broad range of violence and injury prevention topics including emerging issues in the field.

Submit abstracts on new, emerging themes

The Safety 2016 Conference covers issues related to the prevention of injuries from all external causes: those resulting from either unintentional events (‘accidents’) or intentional events, such as interpersonal violence and self-harm. The organizers encourage you to submit abstracts on new, emerging themes related to injury prevention and safety promotion and technology, climate change, big data, etc.

Notification of acceptance by January 2016

Authors will be notified of acceptance of their contributions and the type of presentation (oral or poster) by January 2016 (subject to changes). If you have not reached any notification of acceptance until January 2016, please contact bureau.safety2016.

Accepted contributions

Accepted contributions will be presented either as oral presentations or posters according to the decision of the Scientific Committee. All submitted abstracts will be peer-reviewed by national and international safety area experts.

Acceptance of the abstract is subject to acceptance by the Scientific Committee. The Committee has all rights to accept or reject the abstract. All accepted abstracts will be published in the Final Programme, subject to the author’s confirmation of presenting the paper and registering as a paid delegate. The accepted abstracts will be published as typed by the author, including any errors in grammar, spelling or scientific facts.

Instruction and abstract submission

Please read abstract instructions carefully before submitting your abstract. 

Instructions for abstract submission
Submit your abstract here 

Important Dates

  • Call for abstracts and registration opens: 1 May 2015

  • Deadline for abstract submission: 1 November 2015

  • End of early bird registration: 16 May 2016

  • Safety 2016 conference: 18 – 21 September 2016

6 crucial road safety tips for the road trip holiday season

6 crucial road safety tips for the road trip holiday season

The summer has shown its glorious face and for many people, especially in the USA, this means holiday season and extended ‘road trips’. Yahoo, the online giant has taken a step to ensure its users are safer on the road with ‘6 Road Trip Safety Tips That Could Save Your Life’, we share them with you here.

Perhas a much less nown for their road safety messaging, tech giant Yahoo publishes their 6 Road Trip Safety Tips to keep American drivers safer on the road. While the tips are geared towards America in particular, we know that ‘road trips’ are also popular in other parts of the world, so we share their tips with you too hoping that they could just help you out too!

America is in the middle of road trip season, and we’re excited  — so excited, in fact, that according to one report (see below), many of us are rushing to our cars without taking some simple safety precautions that could save us major problems on the freeway.

Celebrity handyman Chip Wade, host of HGTV’s Elbow Room, is great at fixing problems, but he’d rather not have to when he and his family go driving. Here he tells Yahoo Travel what emergency items he doesn’t get into his car without and how to avoid dangerous accidents on the road. These tips could save your life someday:

1. What is the number one safety mistake that Americans make?

According to the Liberty Mutual Insurance New Beginnings Report, nearly half of Americans don’t check that proper emergency items are in the car prior to hitting the road. This is so easy to fix and could save you a major headache in the event of a car emergency. Today you can even pick up a cell phone charger at a gas station.

2. What should be in our road safety emergency kits?

Having an emergency kit before heading on a road trip is essential. To begin, I always grab common household items to include before buying anything. I like to take along a small flashlight, water bottles for the family, alcohol swabs, Band-Aids, a cell phone charger, and other items commonly used in the home that are easy and accessible to bring along in the car. One item I find particularly useful to include is an old towel — in case you ever need to get underneath the car to check something, you have something to lay on. If you don’t already have the car-specific items in your trunk, some inexpensive items that you should also include are jumper cables and a multi-purpose tool you can use on many parts of your car.

To keep all of the items in one place, grab a small backpack or tote bag you already have in the house. Personally, I like to use a milk crate because it’s sturdy and keeps all of the items in one place with minimal shuffle.

3. What are the biggest dangers on the road?

I feel that the number one danger on the road are distracted drivers – whether it’s kids in the back seat or trying to reach for something that’s out of sight, taking your eyes of the road for even a split second can end in disaster. 

Read about Distracted Driving in the Youth and Road Safety Action Kit

4. How can we best prepare ourselves for those dangers?

Before you start any road trip it’s very important to make sure you have any necessary items you may need while driving in one spot and easy to reach. Make sure you have everything organized before you leave — that includes having the GPS loaded with your destination, your music already hooked up, and put down the phone. If your car has Bluetooth, use it. Don’t text and drive or try to make calls. Additionally, keep the children entertained during a road trip so they don’t distract you. I like to play my children’s favorite music or, before we head out, set them up with a tablet to play games on. If something comes up and you need to lend a hand to your kids or make a call, be sure to pull off the road into a safe spot.

5. What skills should we learn before setting out on a lengthy road trip?

I highly recommend learning a few car DIY maintenance silks before hitting the road. Even if you get your car inspected before you leave, you never know when something will come up. A tire check is a must. Learn how to check the air pressure in your tires and add air to any tires that are low. Most local gas stations have an air pressure gauge that you can use for under a dollar. Learning how to change a tire is another helpful skill.

In addition, make sure that you know how to manually add windshield wiper fluid and oil to your car’s full line and make sure your windshield wiper blades are still in good condition. I’d also recommend brushing up on how to change your wiper blades.

6.  Anything else that you think is important?

In the event of an emergency, don’t be a part of this statistic. According to Liberty Mutual Insurance:

    60% of Americans forget windshield wiper fluid
    40% forget jumper cables
    39% forget a flashlight
    31% forget a cell phone charger

Calling on Caribbean and Latin American youth for Project Yellow Light

Calling on Caribbean and Latin American youth for Project Yellow Light

Our friends over at the Caribbean Development Bank are working with Project Yellow light to encourage young people to create road safety awareness videos. Make a video. Their straplines are simple, “Win a prize. Save a life”. Caribbean and Latin American youth can enter the  contest and could win a trip for submitting your video to attend the Grand Prix Formula 1 in Mexico or win an iPad mini!

With your video you will motivate and persuade other young people to drive safely and responsibly. You have until September 20 to submit your video. The winners will be contacted before October 6Project Yellow Light wants to know your ideas and views through the videoUse your creativity to convey the message in the best way possible. This is a unique opportunity to make your voice heard and to promote road safety in your community.

Let us work together for a region free of road accidentsYellow Light project is based on “Project Yellow Light” created by the parents of Hunter Garner, a teenager who died in the US in a traffic accident in 2007. The participants, aged between 18 and 30 years of age in Latin America and the Caribbean, are invited to produce short videos of 25 or 55 seconds to encourage his generation to drive safely.

See the promotional posters from the project below:

MAKE YOUR VIDEO NOW
To participate, send your video and fill out the registration. As a participant, you have the potential to play a key role in spreading this important message. Only you have the ability communicate with young people of your generation in a more direct and effective way in which adults can not, and so let them know the tragic consequences that can generate sending a text message while driving and the risk of similar behavior. This is a unique opportunity to make your voice heard and to promote safety and good habits in your community. Remember that the more people you reach, the more lives are saved.

Yellow Light project is based on “Project Yellow Light” created by the parents of Hunter Garner, a teenager who died in the US in a traffic accident in 2007. The participants, aged between 18 and 30 years of age in Latin America and the Caribbean, are invited to produce short videos of 25 or 55 seconds to encourage his generation to drive safely. Read more here (Spanish). Read more here (English).

Road safety targets in Sustainable Development Agenda secured!

Road safety targets in Sustainable Development Agenda secured!

As you would have seen on the YOURS website, we have been involved in the push to include road safety targets in the forthcoming Sustainable Development Agenda Post 2015. Along with our Global Youth Network for Road Safety we have been at the forefront of advocating for road safety targets to be included from a youth perspective in the UN’s youth calls for input. We are very happy to announce that road safety targets have been included in the final text of the new Sustainable Development Goals adopted by UN member states in New York!

A specific stand-alone target in the Health Goal to reduce road traffic fatalities by 50% by 2020 and a target on sustainable urban transport in the Cities Goal have been approved, in a landmark achievement for the global road safety community. For our friends at the FIA Foundation, it marks a successful culmination to more than three years of advocacy and coordination of a campaign, in partnership with a wide coalition including YOURS, to secure inclusion of road safety in the global development agenda for the first time. FIA Foundation staffers participated in the final two-week session of intergovernmental negotiations, as they have done in every relevant session for the past 18 months, talking to government missions and UN agencies to ensure that the targets retained support. YOURS also helped with this push.

The SDGs will guide all global development efforts over the next 15 years, designed to ‘stimulate action in areas of critical importance for humanity and the planet’.

The final wording of the targets, which will be formally adopted by world leaders at a special summit in New York in September, is:

Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages:

3.6. By 2020, halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents

(In the Health Goal, the stand-alone road safety target is lined up alongside other major priorities including maternal and under-5 mortality, AIDS and universal health coverage. The 2020 SDG target is far more ambitious than the 2020 goal set for the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety to ‘stabilize and reduce’ road deaths.)

Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable:

11.2. By 2030, 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

At the UN in New York Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United Nations, joined Nicholas Alipui, UNICEF Director and Senior Adviser on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, Werner Obermeyer, Deputy to the Executive Director of the World Health Organization office at UN Headquarters in New York, Saul Billingsley, FIA Foundation Director General, Avi Silverman, Director of Advocacy and Communications, and Natalie Draisin, Manager, US Office to celebrate the inclusion of road safety in the Sustainable Development Goals.

A delegation of #SaveKidsLives campaigners from New York schools presented Ambassador de Aguiar Patriota with the Child Declaration on Road Safety, a call to action for safer roads for all the world’s children. A ministerial-level conference will be hosted by the Brazilian Government in November 2015 to discuss the implementation of the road safety SDG targets.

The FIA Foundation’s director, Saul Billingsley, said: “This is an historic advance for road safety. For the first time this issue is recognised and included as part of the mainstream global priorities for the next fifteen years. For the first time UN member states have committed, in lengthy intergovernmental negotiations, to a specific, time-based, numerical global target for road fatality reduction. By setting a 2020 health target, and demanding early results, the international community is recognising the urgency of the road traffic fatality epidemic and making this a priority issue within the SDGs. Governments, donors and the road safety community must rise to this challenge – which goes far beyond the goal set for the UN Decade of Action – and accelerate and amplify efforts to reduce this avoidable carnage on the roads.”

Director of YOURS, Floor Lieshout, said: ““We must ensure that there is mainstream youth involvement in implementing these goals over the next 15 years. Young people are hugely affected in terms of road traffic injuries and together with robust laws, enforcement, infrastructure improvements and education, youth can make a massive impact amongst their peers for positive road safety action. This was the motivation in recruiting Mr Aakash Shah as our Ambassador for the Post-2015 Agenda”.

YOURS has been working in alignment with the international community in pushing for Safe and Sustainable Transport to be recognized and acknowledged on major international platforms pertaining to youth priorities for the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Read some of our highlights for our involvement in the consultation rounds in the Post-2015 Development Agenda. 

As consultations on the post-2015 development agenda moved forward, YOURS amplifed young people’s voices and advocated for road safety. YOURS was heavily involved in the GPY2015 (Global Partnership on Youth) a consultation run by the Secretary General’s Special Envoy on Youth. This culminated in a Crowdsourcin platform where youth addressed ideas and solutions to pressing youth issues and voted on the most pertinent. Safe and Sustainable Transport, proposed by YOURS was voted as the #1 issue in Health and overall. Read more.

In our consistent push to bring road safety to the international agenda, our Global Youth Network for Road Safety strongly believes that road safety should be on the agenda, so we wrote written a letter to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s special Envoy on Youth Mr Ahmad Alhendawi. We publish it here for you to see. Read more.

Our CORE Group Representative for South America, Mr Daniel Cano attended the  prestigious World Urban Forum 7 (WUF) in Medellin, Colombia representing YOURS with the mission of bringing the global road safety cause to the table in discussions for the Post-2015 Development Agenda. He has written a report for YOURS and we share it with you here.

YOURS officially joined the Global Partnership for Youth on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. This partnership brings together a list of organizations around the world interested in the youth element of the Post-2015 Development Agenda. YOURS joined representing the youth arm of the global road safety push. Read more.

YOURS was involved in a landmark conference for the Post-2015 Development Agenda; the World Conference on Youth which took place in Sri Lanka.  The biggest youth conference in the world brought together young people from over 170 countries. The event carried the tagline of ‘Mainstreaming Youth in the Post-2015 Development Agenda’ and served as one of the principal methods of hearing young people’s voices in the next development agenda moving beyond Millennium Development Goals. Read more about it here.

The objective of the GPY2015 partnership is to ensure that young people are actively participating in the setting, implementing, and evaluating the new development agenda due to replace the MDGs in 2015. This partnership offers a unique platform for all stakeholders working on youth development to express their views, and help identify specific targets and indicators for youth empowerment, which could feature in the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Read more.

In New York, the third annual ECOSOC Youth Forum concluded with a Global Youth Call being presented to the Member States. Endorsed by more than 1,000 youth and civil society organizations from some 140 countries, the Global Youth Call is an emerging global consensus on concrete proposals for target areas on youth in the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Forty speakers from the floor provided their comments and reflections on the consolidated document. Read more.

We share that a specific road safety goal has been mentioned in the zero draft in the “Introduction and proposed goals and targets on sustainable development for the Post-2015 Development Agenda”. Read more.

YOURS CORE Group Representative for South East Asia Dr Naren Nallapeta is a trained surgeon and a member of the International Federation of Medical Students’ Association (IMFSA), the biggest association of medication professionals around the world. He is also passionate about road safety and on the basis of this, attended the 63rd IMFSA General Assembly in Taiwan, Province of China, with the mission of sharing road safety for the Post-2015 Agenda. Read more.

The #SaveKidsCampaign has been lead by YOURS in collaboration with United Nation Road Safety Collaboration. The campaign is the official signature movement for the Third UN Global Road Safety Week which holds the theme of ‘children and road safety’. This constitutes children from age 0-18. The campaign creates a tangible movement for road safety all around the world and places an increased focus on the cause to influence the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda. Read more.

In our mission to promote youth and road safety issues across the world, a new member of the team comes aboard at YOURS with a specific and robust mission to embed youth into the forthcoming Post-2015 Development Agenda. Aakash Shah is a young, passionate and talented young man who has previously worked closely on the MY World survey in India and continues to make strides for youth involvement in road safety. He joins YOURS’ global team in a Global Ambassador position to bring awareness to the road safety crisis facing youth on an international platform. Read more about his role here.

Within this process, YOURS’ Ambassador on the Post 2015 Development Agenda, Mr Aakash Shah has been leading an advocacy push to reach out to permanent missions at the United Nations calling for specific support on targets in the Sustainable Development Agenda and involvment in the High Level Conference on Road Safety in Brasilia. Read the letter sent to permanent missions across the UN here.

Brian’s Column: African youth must ACT locally for road safety

Brian’s Column: African youth must ACT locally for road safety

Our regular columnist Mr Brian Bilal Mwebaze is back with his regular column. This time he’s talking about the milestones that have influenced change in Africa while focusing on the things that still require immediate attention. His column is challenging the current status quo not mainstreaming youth in road safety decisions and calls upon all to do so.

I think we’re sick and tired of mentioning road traffic injuries to be the eighth leading cause of death globally, with an impact similar to that caused by many communicable diseases, such as malaria. Sadly, they are still the leading cause of death for young people aged 15–29 years; a fact that should scare the hell outta you noting the heavy toll road traffic crashes have on us as we announce our arrival in our most productive years.

Africa continues to have the most dangerous roads in the world, with the risk of death from road traffic injury being highest on the continent (24.1per 100 000 population), and lowest in Europe (10.3 per 100 000). Road Traffic Crashes play the chameleone game most often finding us in places where we obviously chill. Half of the world’s road traffic deaths occur among motorcyclists (23%), pedestrians(22%) and cyclists (5%) – i.e. “vulnerable road users” – with 31% of deaths among car occupants and the remaining 19% among unspecified road users.Young adults aged between 15 and 44years account for 59% of global road traffic deaths and more than three quarters (77%) of all road traffic deaths occur among men (WHO, 2014).

After a lot of negotiations, and convincing the organizers, I was invited to participate in the Mid-Term Review of the African Road Safety Action Plan from 9-10 July 2015 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; an event that was better publicized as the #3AfricaRS on social media and Third African Road Safety Conference in traditional media. But, how have young people been meaningfully involved at Continental level in road safety activities? The jaw dropping question is, ‘What impact have we achieved?’

Perhaps, the most remembered event is the African Road Safety Conference that was held in Accra, Ghana in February 2007.   The conference made several recommendations related to road safety institutions; data; education; management; policy harmonization; partnership and collaboration. The recommendations also covered rural road safety; national road safety targets; as well as actions that were considered as “quick wins”, particularly the enforcement of road safety legislation related to speed control, drink-driving, and use of helmets, among others. No pre-conference youth consultation was conducted.

But, young people’s voices begun to be heard at the African Regional Road Safety Seminar that was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in July 2009 on the theme “Setting Road Safety Targets: A Way Forward for Reducing Accident Fatalities by Half by 2015” . This was a great milestone in road safety management in Africa as it developed and adopted targets and indicators to help track the implementation of the Accra recommendations. Young people’s participation in this event was partially as a result of the global preparations for the Youth Meeting on 18 November 2009 that culminated into Youth Declaration Moscow.

In the Second African Road Safety Conference, held in Addis Ababa in November 2011, which developed the Action Plan for the Decade by aligning the Accra recommendations and the Dar es Salaam targets and indicators with the 5 Pillars of the Decade:-about 12 young people participated. This was also catalysed by the first African Youth Assembly on Road Safety held in Niamey Niger. Needless to say, Youths for Road Safety earlier this year appointed Youth Champions for Road Safety in Africa in 14 African Countries.

 

Back to #3AfricaRS, organized by ECA in collaboration with the African Union Commission (AUC), African Transport Policy Programme (SSATP), the Global Road Safety Facility of the World Bank, the African Development Bank,the International Road Federation (IRF) and other partners, the conference aimed to ensure the effective participation of Africa at the mid-term review of the UN Decade of Action 2011-2015 Decade to be held in Brasilia in November 2015. African Young people do not have a clear structure to be in this global meeting and our participation may depend on luck herself. This shouldn’t be the case, as youth mainstreaming in road safety shouldn’t be undercooked.

However, these are issues that we might not be able to change immediately. African Young leaders in road safety must go back and act locally with public, private, academia partners to realize immediate impact especially in fields of Education as well as especially advocacy in the fields of Engineering and Enforcement for better roads. While a young person may not be enabled to participate in a high level meeting, he/she has the ability to turn his guns to his/her peers, hood, school, or University to make a difference. Procrastination shouldn’t be in our wardrobes. Let’s ACT MORE LOCALLY. #StaySafe