Earlier this month, YOURS – Youth for Road Safety joined the Dialogue to Action: National Summit on VRUs and Road Safety (TRAX) as an official partner, delivering opening remarks through a video message by our Executive Director, Raquel Barrios. The summit brought together policymakers, researchers, civil society, and community leaders from across India to tackle the country’s urgent road safety challenges, especially those impacting vulnerable road users (VRUs) like pedestrians, cyclists, and young motorcyclists.

Our message was clear: young people must be at the centre of designing, implementing, and evaluating road safety solutions. Because when youth lead, mobility systems become more inclusive, responsive, and just.

And in India, this vision is already coming to life. In our journey to put young people at the centre of road safety, India has become a powerful reminder of what’s possible when youth-led action meets opportunity.

This is not a story of one project or one city. It’s a story about how local action, driven by passion and persistence, can spark the kind of change that ripples far beyond borders.

In the buzzing streets of Mumbai, a group of young people began asking hard questions. Why do potholes take months to fix? What happens when citizens are left out of decisions about their roads? Can youth help reshape the very systems that ignore them?

That was the seed of Community Connect, a youth-led initiative launched by Akash Upase and carried forward by Pankhuri Jain through the Blue Ribbon Movement. Over the years, it mobilised hundreds of young people to take civic action, not just cleaning streets or filing complaints, but engaging directly with local officials to demand structural change.

It’s leadership built from lived experience, shaped by workshops, petitions, and the belief that cities get better when citizens are invited to build them.

In Delhi, another story was taking shape. This one involved metro pillars, bright colours, waste management, and a bold belief that art can be activism. Led by Shagun Sharma and the Vrikshit Foundation, the Clean India for Road Safety project brought together over 800 youth to clean, paint, and reclaim public spaces. But this wasn’t just a beautification project but a call to action.

Graffiti became messages, clean streets became safer crossings, and environmental justice became a conversation about road safety.It was local, creative, and deeply political in the best sense of the word: built by the people for the people.

Both of these stories, and many more across the globe,  were made possible through the Local Actions programme by YOURS. This programme supports young leaders with: Funding, mentorship and technical support, a global platform to share their impact, tools to connect with the broader road safety community; through Local Actions, YOURS, not just funding projects;  it is growing a movement of young advocates who are reimagining mobility from the ground up.

India isn’t the only country where young people are reimagining the streets they walk, ride, and live in. But it’s one of many where we see the power of our glocal approach in action: Working with young leaders locally to shape safer mobility systems globally.

From Tanzania to Colombia, from Morocco to the Philippines,  our Local Actions programme is scaling youth-led change, one street at a time. And as this global movement grows, we’re opening doors for deeper collaboration in countries like India, where momentum is real, and partnerships can take it further.

A Final Note of Gratitude

None of this momentum would be possible without allies like TRAX (Dialogue to Action: National Summit on VRUs and Road Safety), who share our belief in youth-led solutions. Thank you for being a steadfast partner in centring young voices—and for convening the policymakers, researchers, and advocates who turn dialogue into action.

If you’re working in India as a policymaker, funder, civil society group, or youth collective,  and believe in the power of youth to change systems, we’d love to talk. Contact Molly Stoneman at Molly@youthforroadsafety.org. 

Learn more about TRAX’s critical work here: trafficzam.com