Participants from 33 countries tuned in last week for the 10th #RAPKnowledgeLive session – Leveraging Technology and Youth Power for Safer Roads.

In this session we had the privilege to be joined by representatives from Fondation Botnar, AIP Foundation and Youth for Road Safety (YOURS).

The session covered:

• the AI&Me framework in the “AI&Me: Empowering Youth for Safer Roads” project and its success;
• importance of youth engagement in road safety;
• how the upgraded Youth Engagement App continues to empower young road safety advocates;
• and introduced the Vietnam Safe School Zone Guide for safer school environments.

The “AI&Me: Empowering Youth for Safer Roads” is a three-year project launched in Vietnam through a collaboration between AIP Foundation, iRAP, and Anditi, with funding from Fondation Botnar and co-funding from FIA Foundation. This project integrates three key technological initiatives: Big Data Screening, Youth Engagement App (YEA) and Star Rating for Schools (SR4S).

Key takeaways from the session:

• Government Buy-In: Greater government buy-in allowed the project to directly influence road safety decision making.
• Public-private partnerships involving multiple partners (government, AIP Foundation, iRAP, Anditi, GRSP) and funders (Fondation Botnar, FIA Foundation, Prudence, Boeing) have developed as a strong and successful method for improving road safety and the well-being of young people and children.
• Evidence-based advocacy: Leveraging evidence-based and internationally recognized tools like Star Rating for Schools (SR4S), AI, satellite imagery and big data, to identify problems, assess risk factors and demonstrate the value of investing in safe infrastructure and safe speed in school zones.
• Capacity building: Developing local expertise in applying advanced technologies to fully leverage their benefits.
• Youth as Assets: Youth are out-of-the-box thinkers, digital natives, fearless changemakers, and key target road users (#1 victims of road crashes).
• Meaningful Youth Participation includes:
  • Forming relationships, understanding the youth community.
  • Building the foundation by identifying barriers and needs of youth participation.
  • Establishing councils, systems, or feedback mechanisms to bring youth into decision-making.
  • Youth Meaningfully Participating to define proposals for road safety interventions.
  • Strengthening participatory processes through monitoring and evaluation.
• The success of an initiative is often the result of multiple contributing projects, such as Vietnam’s school zone safety initiative led by AIP Foundation, which has been built on efforts like AI&Me: Empowering Youth for Safer Roads, Safe School Zones Guide, and Slow Zones-Safe Zones.

Thank you to all our presenters, it is fantastic to see everyone come together to deliver and share their efforts in making school journeys safer for all Vietnamese students.

Recording and presentation slides now available

The #RAPKnowledgeLive Session 10 recording is now available, along with the presentations slides (see links below)