In our efforts to bring attention to road safety projects and organizations working with young people all around the world, this month, YOURS puts the spotlight on Avenir Sante. The French organization translated, Future Health works on preventing risky behaviour with young people on areas such as road safety, alcohol and drug addiction and sexual health. The organization was founded in 1998 and works with nearly 250,000 young people every year!
Prevention by young people for young people is Avenir Sante’s slogan.
Avenir Sante are young people who have come together, and carry out preventive actions for the benefit of other young people! The young people involved are usually same age making exchanges of information and chats more freely, without taboos and without preaching the morality of risk-taking.
Avenir Sante want to help by making young people think, informing and directing (They say ‘We are not professionals and therefore we do not instruct young people on how to act’)
The organization’s themes focus on road accidents, addictions: tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, AIDS and STDs), there are 240,000 young people per year on their study sites, party in the street, in short, where they are !
Creating preventative actions is difficult which is why Avenir Sante offers a framework for action, they form and accompany them on the actions through training.
Actions are held in seven regions: Ile-de-France, Rhône-Alpes, Midi-Pyrenees, Languedoc-Roussillon, Pays de la Loire, Auvergne and Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur!
They say, ‘We just hope to be useful and that the association will grow, grow, grow!’
With regards to road safety the organization opeates under the following principles;
We want to change the headlines for Monday morning!
The results are clear: the road deaths decreased each year (-7.5% in 2008 compared to 2007). Yeah, but not for kids! The amount of young people being killed is not declining, even worse! In 2008, there’s been 1.7% of deaths among 18-24 year olds (always / 2007). Avenir Sante explain that this is the same with drinking and driving: frankly, we can do better. 5.5% of drivers (all ages) involved in an accident had a blood alcohol level that was illegal. This figure rises to 16.3% in case of fatal accidents.
Then, we decided to act. There’s already a lot of things organized: opera “Sat“, “Blow, you know” and event organizers (student association, clubs …) are a lot of things. We do not want the title of a Sunday or Monday morning newspaper to show a car in the ditch with five young in it!
Avenir Sante think that prevention is really necessary and that it can work: young people just want to have a fun night and a fun night is back alive!
Then we go: let’s go to discos in the evenings students in concerts and even before we act (on-site study in, day in the street …). We we want to empower young people, with our instruments, through their participation. We act as a team and we’re all young! We address the risk in general because the causes are many: alcohol, cannabis, speed, fatigue.
Avenir Sante’s message is not anti-party: it’s just taken anti-risk.