Our YOURS Coordinator for Europe Ms Ana Rita Lavado, as a passionate advocate for road safety across the European Region, has been involved in a range of advocacy efforts. Her latest updates comes after the implementation from a workshop based around the European Road Safety Charter in Portugal.
Read more about the European Road Safety Charter
The European Road Safety Charter, led by the European Commission, is the largest civil society platform on road safety. To date, more than 2,300 public and private entities have committed to the Charter and carried out road safety actions and initiatives targeted at their members, employees and the rest of civil society.
These actions have strengthened road safety culture across Europe, improved common knowledge about the causes of accidents and helped to create preventative measures and solutions. The Charter’s diverse community of members is made up of companies, associations, local authorities, research institutions, universities and schools. All committed entitles are given genuine recognition and their actions are made public.
Highlights from the Evora Workshop.
The 3rd European Road Safety Charter Workshop took place in Evora, Portugal, in mid April 2014. This follows the first workshop in Vilnius, Lithuania, and the second one in Drachten, the Netherlands.
This workshop was part of a series of ERSCharter events across all 28 Member States over the next 3 years. The tour aims to continually create awareness of road safety amongst young people, whilst following the EU Road Safety Policy Orientations set up by the European Commission for the decade 2011-2020.
Regional Coordnator for Europe 2012-2014 Mr Axel Druart and 2014-2016 Ms Ana Rita Lavado prepare the Evora workshop alonside organizer Sophie Noah.
The association GARE welcomed road safety stakeholders and experts in Evora, to debate with Portuguese youngsters on the current issues they are facing on the road.
After coming back last November 2013 from Italy to work on the European Youth Forum for Road Safety (EYFRS), the Portuguese Delegate from GARE, Ms Ana Rita Lavado (recently nominated by YOURS as the new European Regional Coordinator), has been preparing the Portuguese Charter Workshop event, in order to create new synergies between the Charters’ members and to collaborate to develop new Youth Commitments in Portugal. The present phase of the ERSCharter, which is running for 3 years (2013- 2016), continues to promote the commitment of civil society with a focus on vulnerable road users, especially youth. For its promotion all over Europe, workshops are planned to take place in all the Member States during these 3 years, in order to follow the EU Road Safety Policy Orientations set up by the European Commission for the decade 2011-2020.
The Euopean Road Safety Charter Workshop in Evora, Portugal took candidates through youth and road safety issues and action planning.
GARE is a Portuguese NGO, developing awareness campaigns in the most stratums and sectors of the population to promote a road safety culture. Celebrating its 9th anniversary on the 11th of April, GARE has been active all those years through the development of a set of various activities: several sensitisation’s actions on the field (e.g. with their famous Alcokart), training and pedagogical work with students and teachers at high, secondary and primary schools, information to all kind of public, seminaries and workshops with specialists on the theme. GARE’s main goal is to promote a Road Safety Culture among youngsters and general society, and also to do effective work to prevent fatalities and injuries on the road.
The Portuguese Workshop was held in Evora, from 2pm to 6pm, with an identification of the main national issues, following a debate on the potential actions to develop, in order to end up with implementable outcomes in collaboration with the main Portuguese road safety Stakeholders and engender more specific commitments within the ERSCharter.
This update was provided by Ana Rita Lavado – Coordinator of the European Region