Earlier this week, the YOURS staff team were in attendance at the 3rd Muscat Youth Summit that took place in Muscat, Oman. This event brought together over 300 young people from around the world to discuss and take action on pressing global youth issues. This year, road safety was firmly on the agenda as YOURS delivered a day long workshop on the Global Road Safety Problem with a group of delegates.
The 3rd Muscat Youth Summit (MYS) gave focus to a plethora of pressing youth issues facing young people in a changing world. From sustainable cities to urban arts, from graffiti expression to digital activism; the Muscat Youth Summit was an engaging and progressive exploration of global youth issues in an interactive and participatory approach.
This year, the YOURS staff team were in attendance to the MYS to bring attention to the global road safety problem against a backdrop of important issues to be addressed in the coming years for global youth development.
Our workshop was attended by over 30 young people who had chosen to give road safety their attention. The workshop facilitated by the YOURS team gave the young people a taster on the global road safety problem from ‘Why Road Safety is a Global Issue’ to ‘Why young people are vulnerable road users’ with a focus on how young people can be road safety actors and ambassadors back home.
The workshop was inherently participatory and interactive with lots of ice-breakers, energizers, role plays and multi-platform expression with the embedding of many different activities to enable active learning.
The day long workshop started by gauging young people’s knowledge of global road safety to which many were not aware the road crashes were the biggest killer of young people globally. Young people then went on to explore the reasons behind this and came to grasp the fact that young people are vulnerable road users with reference to the key risk factors causing road crashes.
Our workshop attendees then went through fast paced learning sessions on seatbelts, speed and distracted driving and with young people taking the message and personalizing it through interactive role plays, expression through art and learning through doing.
At the end of the workshop, YOURS assessed learning again to see a visible change in their knowledge and attitude. From 40% of young people saying they thought seatbelt wearing was important at the start of the workshop to 100% expressing their support for seatbelt use saw a clear attitude change and learning journey take place from start to finish.
YOURS then encouraged young people to write down their personal action plans to commit to road safety beyond the workshop. The young people not only pledged to be safer but also said that they wanted to share the road safety message with their peers as well as not speed, encourage safer driving amongst family and friends as well as many other personal road safety commitments.
The young people told YOURS: ‘This workshop was really important and really fun, I learnt a lot and my attitude towards the road has changed’. A video report with testimonials from the young people will be available shortly! YOURS will also provide an evaluative report shortly. As YOURS moves forward into 2012, our focus on global workshops will continue!
YOURS thanks Brand Oman and the organizers of the Muscat Youth Summit for their commitment to road safety and for their efforts to facilitate this engaging, progressive and empowering youth summit!