Since the Monday 26th November, the Training of Facilitators for Road Safety Workshops has tackled a whole host of road safety topics and brought our young participants into the field of facilitation to equip them with the skills and knowledge needed to run their own road safety workshops. The training is now on its fourth day and the participants have engaged with great motivation and determination since its start.
From how humans learn to peer education, from the fundamentals of a conducive human learning environment to why young people are at more risk on the road than any other age group. The training of facilitators is bringing 11 young Kenyan leaders into the road safety field to enable them to become better informed and skilled youth advocates and to run their own road safety workshops across Kenya.
The two week programme firstly focusses on road safety theory and has already tackled the fundamental elements, characteristics, pointers that road safety educators and advocators should possess. They have understood the key performances of good facilitation and grasped examples of bad facilitation actions. Alongside this, the young participants from around Kenya have also understood why young people are at particular risk of road traffic injuries relating their age, gender and inexperience as well as the broader scope road safety problem around the world. The participants then went on to understand the road safety crisis facing young people in Kenya and grasping the the statistics behind road deaths in Kenya.
The learning wall displays the young facilitator’s work each day as they learn new concepts. The picture illustrates the young people’s understanding of how crashes happen in the context of the Haddon Matrix.
On Wednesday, Liana Vetch of the United Nations Environment Programme put the features of the road safety system in context with her presentation on the ‘Share the Road’ programme and opened dialogue with the young people on creating a safe infrastructure that enables safe routes. Share the Road is a UNEP initiative, developed with the FIA Foundation for the Automobile and Society. It brings together the environment and safety agendas in the context of urban transport in the developing world where the majority, pedestrians and cyclists, are disadvantaged on the road. The overall goal is to catalyse government and donor policies for systematic investments in walking and cycling road infrastructure.
Liana Vetch of the UNEP gives a presentation to the young participants on the Share the Road Programme.
Next week, the training continues with practical testing of everything the young people have learnt in the week of theory. Today, they are undertaking a session of the key risk factor; helmets; speed and distracted driving and will design their own road safety workshops to run with the volunteers of the Kenya Red Cross – Karen Langata branch in which they will facilitate a workshop with 60 young Red Cross young affiliates.
