On the first of November 2010 a Youth and Road Safety Trainers Workshop took place in Siem Reap – Cambodia, hosted by the Cambodia Red Cross an organized in close partnership with Global Road Safety Partnership and YOURS – Youth for Road Safety. Approximately 20 persons attended the workshop, the majority were youth leaders from the Cambodia Red Cross.
Workshop highlights
During the workshop Handicap International Belgium presented the data of Cambodia and the latest research on road safety (with a focus on drunk driving and helmet use). After the statistics we had a first brainstorm exercise to identify why young people are over represented in road crashes. After the brainstorm YOURS presented the complexity of youth and road safety issues. Why do young people behave like they do in traffic?
The next highlight was on the use of peer-education. Due to a presentation and an exercise (advantages and disadvantages of peer-education) the participants got a general understanding when, where and how you can use peer-education to get into touch with young people. By showing some success stories from other young people in other countries the participants were inspired by this technique.
The last session we provided was on youth communication. Due to examples we explained ´target groups´ and the approaches taken by other industries. Finally we introduced a simple evaluation technique, the 7c´s, for reviewing posters and leaflets and their effectiveness.
Next steps
The Cambodia Red Cross spent the last session on planning the next workshops and discussing the more specific needs. While writing this report, we know that the next workshop, building on this one, is a two-day workshop planned for 2-3 December in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The objectives of this workshop are:
- To build knowledge and understanding of the CRC Youth Leaders in youth related road safety situation, safety helmets, drink driving and about why youth are over represented in road crashes
- To increase the capacity of the CRC Youth Leaders and road safety peer education skills and their expertise in getting the message across to young people and youth communication
- To introduce Good Practice Manual and Facts (data and research) about risks and consequences of non-helmet wearing and drink driving
- To encourage participants to develop own initiative have to plan, organize and conduct road safety publicity campaigns throughout Phnom Penh
Overall, the event was a great success for YOURS and saw our key pillar of capacity development in action.