YOURS awarded by MAPFRE Foundation in Madrid

YOURS awarded by MAPFRE Foundation in Madrid

by | Dec 20, 2023 | News & Blog

FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE has announced its 2014 Social Awards. These international prizes recognize people and institutions that have made outstanding contributions for the benefit of society. This year there were over 450 nominations. The Jury selected YOURS unique Capacity Development Programme as the Best Road Safety initiative in 2014. The Award comes with a grant of 30,000 euros. Her Majesty Queen Sofía of Spain chaired the Award Ceremony on the 18th of June at the prestigious Casino of Madrid.

Globally, road traffic crashes are the number one killer of young people, ahead of HIV/Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Every day more than 1000 young lives (under the age of 25 years1) are lost and thousands more young people are injured on the world’s roads. The numbers are not merely statistics. Behind each number are a person, a family, a friend and a story of how life can change in an instant. But there is hope. Youth want to be part of the road safety solution and claim a seat at the road safety decision-making table.

YOURS accepts award for ‘Best Prevention and Road Safety Initiative’ from her Majesty Queen Sophia of Spain

In response to this crisis, many young people set out to become road safety activists, raising awareness to those around them and advocating for the cause to their governments for more serious action. The global youth movement for road safety is gaining pace but there are still many who find road safety information inaccessible to them and there are lots more passionate individuals who need guidance in getting started.

This is precisely why YOURS developed their Capacity Development Programme. The Programme has three elements: the Youth and Road Safety Action Kit, the Youth and Road Safety Workshops and its flagship workshop, an intensive two-week Training of Facilitators. The Programme has been created by young people for young people and maximizes learning through fun and active participation. 

Director of YOURS Floor Lieshout delivers his speech in thanks of all the supporters of YOURS at the Madrid ceremony.

The Capacity Development Programme introduces youth to road safety, inspires them, and equips them with the knowledge and the skills they need to take immediate action. The Programme is attractive, youth friendly and highly interactive, giving much needed attention to the global road safety threat facing young people. Workshops have been conducted all over the world including the Sultanate of Oman, Cambodia, Kenya, Niger, Italy, St.Lucia and Belize. The Programme has already reached tens of thousands of youth worldwide and continues to create ripples of road safety action the world over.

Read about Capacity Development at YOURS

On the importance of the Award, Floor Lieshout – Director of YOURS – Youth For Road Safety said:
“On behalf of the entire team of YOURS – Youth for Road Safety, it is an absolute honour to accept this distinguished award. We are thrilled to receive this award from such a well-respected organization, FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE, a leader in the field and esteemed colleague at the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration. It is an extreme pleasure to get this important recognition for our hard work over the past couple of years.”

YOURS wins best road safety initiative award!

YOURS wins best road safety initiative award!

by | Dec 20, 2023 | News & Blog

Everybody at YOURS is incredibly excited to announce that our Capacity Development Programme can now be termed ‘award winning’ as the Fundación MAPFRE award us the Best Road Prevention and Safety Initiative. We are very happy to have our programme recognized and share this news with you all.

FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE has announced its 2014 Social Awards. These international prizes recognize people and institutions that have made outstanding contributions for the benefit of society. This year there were over 450 nominations. The Jury selected YOURS unique Capacity Development Programme as the Best Road Safety initiative in 2014. The Award comes with a grant of 30,000 euros. Her Majesty Queen Sofía of Spain will chair the Award Ceremony on the 18th of June at the prestigious Casino of Madrid.

Globally, road traffic crashes are the number one killer of young people, ahead of HIV/Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Every day more than 1000 young lives (under the age of 25 years) are lost and thousands more young people are injured on the world’s roads. The numbers are not merely statistics. Behind each number are a person, a family, a friend and a story of how life can change in an instant. But there is hope. Youth want to be part of the road safety solution and claim a seat at the road safety decision-making table.

In response to this crisis, many young people set out to become road safety activists, raising awareness to those around them and advocating for the cause to their governments for more serious action. The global youth movement for road safety is gaining pace but there are still many who find road safety information inaccessible to them and there are lots more passionate individuals who need guidance in getting started.

This is precisely why YOURS developed their Capacity Development Programme. The Programme has three elements: the Youth and Road Safety Action Kit, the Youth and Road Safety Workshops and its flagship workshop, an intensive two-week Training of Facilitators. The Programme has been created by young people for young people and maximizes learning through fun and active participation. 

The Capacity Development Programme introduces youth to road safety, inspires them, and equips them with the knowledge and the skills they need to take immediate action. The Programme is attractive, youth friendly and highly interactive, giving much needed attention to the global road safety threat facing young people. Workshops have been conducted all over the world including the Sultanate of Oman, Cambodia, Kenya, Niger, Italy, St.Lucia and Belize. The Programme has already reached tens of thousands of youth worldwide and continues to create ripples of road safety action the world over.

On the importance of the Award, Floor Lieshout – Director of YOURS – Youth For Road Safety said:

“On behalf of the entire team of YOURS – Youth for Road Safety, it is an absolute honour to accept this distinguished award. We are thrilled to receive this award from such a well-respected organization, FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE, a leader in the field and esteemed colleague at the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration. It is an extreme pleasure to get this important recognition for our hard work over the past couple of years.

For more information: www.fundacionmapfre.org

Updates from the YOURS Training of Facilitators – Belize

Updates from the YOURS Training of Facilitators – Belize

by | Dec 20, 2023 | News & Blog

The YOURS Training of Faciliators in Belize in well into the second week of training workshops as young Belizean leaders prepare to slip into their roles as Faciliators of Youth and Road Safety Workshops. After a week of theory based training through a highly interactive and a selection of participatory workshops, the youth approach the ending of their training programme and will end by runing pilot workshops with youth from across the country.

The Training of Facilitators (ToF) took place over a two week period and is the full delivery of the YOURS programme to train a group of young people to become facilitators of their own youth and road safety workshops to run in the local community. The ToF was initiated and conducted by YOURS in partnership with the organizations named above. The training kicked off on 1st June and will complete on 12th June 2015.

Week one comprised of theory based active learning where 18 young leaders gain all the knowledge needed to run their own workshops.

In week one, a selection of road safety topics as well as the fundamentals of workshops facilitation was focused upon in an interactive and ‘brain friendly’ methodology which couples fun with key learning. In total, 18 youth have been trained including a selection of 16 youth leaders who will become road safety facilitators and peer-educators and 2 Junior Master Trainers who will look to train the next groups of facilitators looking forward.

After a week of interactive learning, the young Belizean leaders will now work on their own workshops as they pilot their skills for the first time.

The aims of the training is to:

  • Increase young people´s understanding of the road safety crisis in Belize and the risks they face on the roads (e.g: speeding, drink and distracted driving).
  • Promote and increase the involvement of young people in road safety efforts in Belize.
  • Build the knowledge and develop the skills of 18 youth leaders in order for them to implement their own road safety activities

Using a selection of methods, YOURS trains the second cadre of Faciltators through brain friendly learning.

As we commence the second week, the facilitators begin to prepare their own workshops after observing a demonstration workshop with youth from the field. This week, all knowledge and skills will be put to the test as the facilitators will be working in smaller teams to facilitate a real life 3 hours road safety session with their peers from across the country.

As well a building of capacity of the facilitators chosen for the programme, the training was featured on Belizean morning television with the road safety programme being explained to the wider public on national television. The programme will conclude on 12th June and after this Belizean Youth for Road Safety (BY4RS) will take to the country to train in excess of 2000 youth with. Our aim is to see a 20% reduction in youth traffic fatalities and injuries on the road in the coming year. We are incredibly excited to see Belize as the robust test bed for the programme as we plan to roll the programme out across the region.

Final updates on the Capacity Development Programme in Belize will be online soon!

Second Belize Training of Faciliators kicks off in Belize!

Second Belize Training of Faciliators kicks off in Belize!

by | Dec 20, 2023 | News & Blog

In partnership with the Government of Belize and the Caribbean Development Bank, YOURS returns to Belize to train a second cadre of young faciltators specially selected from Belize’s talented youth leaders. The training will train more than 16 youth to support the previous 20 trained last year to reach over 2,000 young Belizeans on road safety issues all aropund the country.

Background to the Workshop

The Training of Facilitators (ToF) will take place over a two week period and is the full delivery of the YOURS programme to train a group of young people to become facilitators of their own youth and road safety workshops to run in the local community. The ToF was initiated and conducted by YOURS in partnership with the organizations named above. The training takes place from 1st – 12th June 2015.

The training kicked off with an opening ceremony with words from Mr Erol Gentle, CEO; Ministry of Works and Transport. Representing the Government of Belize, Mr Crispin Jeffries; Cheif Transport Officer, Depart of Transport. Mr Floor Lieshout; Director of YOURS – Youth for Road Safety.

The aims of the training is to:

  • Increase young people´s understanding of the road safety crisis in Belize and the risks they face on the roads (e.g: speeding, distracted driving).
  • Promote and increase the involvement of young people in road safety efforts in Belize.
  • Build the knowledge and develop the skills of 18 youth leaders in order for them to implement their own road safety activities

Part two of the training has already kicked off in Belize.

The training commencing training a second cadre of youth in Belize as well as Junior Master Trainers.

Creating the Agenda

The agenda for the training was created in collaboration with the national partners in Belize  and it was with these partners that we chose the which key risk factors to focus on. Additionally, our local partners enabled us to access local statistics to localize the sessions. The training followed the unique stage process to couple theory with practise to give the participants concrete experience and build the skills they need to become effective facilitators. The stages were:

In this edition of the training, YOURS will train ‘Junior Master Trainers’ selected from the first pool of facilitators who will help to sustain the longevity of the programme and train new more facilitators moving forward.

Topics Covered

The training offered a high level of detail in week one on road safety theory and covered a range of topics which can be read in more detail here. The topics covered were:

  1. Facilitation Skills
  2. Peer Education
  3. Fundamentals of Human Learning
  4. Scope of the Road Safety Problem
  5. Youth and Road Traffic Injuries
  6. How Crashes Happen
  7. Key Risk Factors in Road Safety: Speeding, Drink and Drug Driving and Distracted Driving
  8. Communication and Public Speaking Skills
  9. Team and Trust Building
  10. Developing a Youth and Road Safety Workshop
  11. Evaluation methods


You can expect more updates from the training on the YOURS website shortly!

Training of Facilitators – Belmopan, Belize from Manpreet Darroch on Vimeo.

Brian’s Column: Road safety in African consultations

Brian’s Column: Road safety in African consultations

by | Dec 20, 2023 | News & Blog

Brian is back with his monthly column straight after appointing the National Youth Champions for Road Safety in Anglophone Africa. He’s back to reflect on his YOURS involvement in adolescent health consultations championed by the WHO in Johannesburg, South Africa. He offers some insights on the process in the mean time!

See, one of the oldest tales in the history of animal kingdom lied the suspicious female Chameleone who grew impatient of stories hovering over her apparent cheating husband. In a bid to resolve the matter once and for all, she patiently followed her husband and on that fateful day, she overheard him planning to meet his lover on one green tree. There was no time to waste, as the female Chameleone jogged to the said tree 2 hours before, and got her new green camouflage on. When the husband popped up well too early before the lover, the female Chameleone emerged from her ghetto smiling wryly with an evidence based degree of surity before uttering ‘Gotcha’. Legend says, the male Chameleone did castrate himself.

In what has been arguably the most busiest and well, the most defining part of 2016:-wow!, I meant 2015, comes the moment when I, together with 2 YOURS members from South Africa were at Emperors Palace, Hotel Casino Convention Resort, Johannesburg, South Africa Johannesburg from 5th-8th May 2015 with one mission:-‘Using evidence to get  Road Traffic Injuries into Africa Regional Consultation for UN Secretary General’s Global Strategy on Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health (2016-2030)”

In an effort to generate consensus on the priority issues and recommendations for adolescents and young people in the 2016-2030 Revised Global Strategy, WHO, PMNCH and UNFPA hosted an Adolescents and Youth Pre-consultation on the 5th of May 2015. Attended by nearly 50 young people from West Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa as panelists, plenary speakers and floor contributors, the meeting built on the revised Global Strategy’s additional focus on adolescents’ health, in acknowledgment of the role of  adolescents and youth in accountability framework and governance structure of outcomes.  With so many issues faced by adolescents and young people, how could a 3 man team get road traffic injuries into the final position paper? Did we have to strip ourselves or the evidence naked? We didn’t chose the latter…

Using existing scientific and credible evidence coupled by building from the experiences of the participants did we finally get the necessary attention for the world’s most dangerous assassin of young people. Thanks to WHO, we used the following advocacy catch phrases:

  •  Road traffic Crashes are the leading cause of death for young people aged 15-29!
  • Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for adolescents aged 15-17!
  • Road traffic crashes are Preventable with low cost efforts like pedestrian walkways.
  • Globally, over 500 children are killed by road traffic crashes every day, with more than half happening in developing countries especially in Africa.
  • How many of you here have heard, witnessed a young life lost in a road traffic crash in their neighborhood?
  • As everybody shared key issues, priorities and recommendations from their respective sub-regions, plenary sessions, I always volunteered to be delegated to constitute the writing team for the position paper because you want always to be sure that after all the talk, your ideas are included in the final document:-You just got another advocacy trick without buying me a drink!

But perhaps, the most significant move was to ‘have the balls’ to ask some global health leaders what they thought about road traffic injuries Vs adolescents and young people during those coffee breaks and lunch breaks! There were leaders who greatly believed ‘SOMETHING’ needed to be done about road traffic injuries and we were even further encouraged by WHO’s Bruce and Jane who’ve been pushing literally a bull by its horns for inclusion of road traffic injuries in the next Global Strategy.

While including Africa region’s young people and adolescents in this consultation was itself a milestone and a half, because this never happened prior to formulation of the late MDGs, getting road traffic injuries in the Africa regional consultation position paper is just one hell of a leap!

Only avoiding ‘loose talk’ to focus on evidence based prioritization in the global health challenges of children, women, young people, coupled by effective follow up at every stage of the way, shall lead us to the promised land. #StaySafe

YOURS participates in WHO Consultation on Adolescent Health

YOURS participates in WHO Consultation on Adolescent Health

by | Dec 20, 2023 | News & Blog

Last week, YOURS was invited by the World Health Organization’s Adolescent Health Department to discuss a broad range of health issues facing youth. As part of a consultation on determinants for adolescent health, YOURS joined a range of youth leaders from sexual and reproductive health to substance abuse. The WHO consultation served as a consultation on the forthcoming report on Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s, and Adolescents’ Health as well as a youth scorecard on health determinants.

During the two day consultation held at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, Switzerland, youth health champions discussed and gathered contributions for accelerating action for adolescent health which will feed into both the United Nations Secretary General’s Global Strategy on Women’s, Children’s and Adolescent’s Health and the World Health Organization’s Framework for Accelerated Action for Adolescent Health. The Adolescent Health Department stated,

“We believe that young people should meaningfully participate in the decisions that affect their health and that are great leaders and agents of change”.

A range of topics were health topics discussed and brought to the table such as violence and road safety, substance abuse, non-communicable diseases, humanitarian efforts, sexual and reproductive health and range of determinants for adolescent health. YOURS contributed to the global road safety topic building on our previous involvement with a similar consultation in Johannesburg, South Africa.

During the consultation, youth undertook a mapping exercise to identify key determinants of adolescent health.

Manpreet Darroch, Comms Officer at YOURS who attended the event said, ‘This consultation served as a unique opportunity to map the key issues facing youth in terms of adolescent health. The sheer variety of youth leaders championing specific health related advocacy, interventions and action brought a plethora of key issues to the table and the team did incredibly well to prioritize topics that will feed into the Global Stategy as well as an exciting opportunity to empower youth with WHO’s youth health scorecard concept’.

Two related events took place during which the aim to identify the elements for a proposal for funding the development and testing of a youth-led scorecard on adolescent health, based on checklists/tools that young people can use to monitor presence and absence of determinants of health and interventions to promote and protect health in their countries and to track health outcomes. 

The group of youth champions from all across the world gathered in Geneva.

The first event took place on the 12th and 13th of May with a broad range of youth champions advocating for health. From the 14th May, the consultation group joined in the sessions of the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA) Pre-World Health Assembly Youth Workshop on Global Health Diplomacy. There was also a stream of sessions focusing on adolescent health during which the group continued the work begun on 12/13th May with additional participants. The discussions during these days were incorporated into into a concrete advocacy strategy for use during the World Health Assembly and beyond. The World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization, is runs from the 18th of May to May 26th.

In continuing the consultation process, YOURS invites all members of the Global Youth Network for Road Safety to participate in this survey on the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s, and Adolescents’ Health. We encourage you to read the Zero Draft and offer input from your perspectives on road safety issues.