Behind Local Actions: the committees and what comes after

 
 
 


We recently announced the winners of our call for proposals for Local Actions 2023. Following a thorough selection process led by an esteemed panel, we selected 15 winners out of the 238 youth leaders who submitted their project proposals. 

Our pre-selection committee was made up of three groups. From the academe, we had Dr. Dario Babić from the University of Zagreb, Dr. Fatima Pereira da Silva from the Polytechnic of Coimbra (IPC) in Portugal, and Dr. Dale Hanson from the James Cook University and International Safe Community Certifying Center. From the Youth Leadership Board, we had Estiara Ellizar, Deepanshu Gupta, and Simon Patrick Obi. From the YOURS-Youth for Road Safety staff, we had Senior Project Manager Iván Víquez and Junior Project Manager Sana’a Khasawneh.


 

Dr. Dario Babić
Dr. Dario is the Vice Dean for Science and External Cooperation at the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, University of Zagreb. He is a Researcher and the Head of the Testing Laboratory at the Department of Traffic Signaling, Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia, with more than 10 years of experience in the field of road safety. His main research interests include quality testing road markings and traffic signs, scientific and commercial projects related to traffic signaling, road safety, driver behavior, driving simulator research, eye tracking, and more.

 
 

Dr. Fátima Pereira da Silva
Dr. Fátima is an Executive Board Member of the International Council on Alcohol, Drings, and Traffic Safety (ICADTS), a Board Member of the European Workplace Drug Testing Society, and a member of Traffic Psychology International (TPI). Dr. Fatima has been a professor at the Polytechnic of Coimbra/Higher Education School (Portugal) for twenty years and coordinator and researcher of the Project on Human Factors and Road Safety. She is acknowledged by the Portuguese Psychologist Association (PPA) as a specialist in the field of Labour, Social, and Organizational Psychology and she is a member of the working committee on Traffic Psychology Issues.

 
 

Dr. Dale Hanson
Dr. Dale is the Associate Director of Medical Education at the Practice Experience Program for General Practice Training Queensland. graduated from Flinders University of South Australia in 1982, initially pursuing a career in Family Medicine, and subsequently in Emergency Medicine. He is an instructor with Advanced Paediatric Life Support Australia. He is an Associate Professor (adjunct) at James Cook University teaching undergraduate Emergency Medicine and postgraduate Public Health.

 
 

Deepanshu Gupta
Deepanshu is a global road safety advocate and a Global Youth Ambassador for Road Safety. He serves as a member of the Youth Sounding Board by the Directorate-General for International Partnerships, European Union, and as a Youth Leadership Board Member for the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety. He is focused on advocating for change and saving lives on the roads. Motivated by the loss of a dear friend in a car crash, he mobilized his community and created one of the biggest road safety NGOs in India, working with the government and local communities.

 
 

Estiara Ellizar
Estiara transport planner who is currently working at the Ministry of Transportation in Indonesia. She is a certified Indonesian young road safety expert with experience in road safety for over five years. Estiara has had multiple roles as a young changemaker in her community. From a regional leader of the Asia region for the Youth Coalition to a Local Action project coordinator, she managed to implement an infrastructure assessment project around a dangerous school zone in Jakarta. Additionally, she has done invaluable contributions to the YOURS library by leading the development of the policy brief about road safety and its connection with SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities.

 
 

Simon Patrick Obi
Simon is a committed and passionate road safety advocate with more than six years of experience.  He has led and championed several interventions aimed at improving health, safety, and the environment. He is the Executive Director of GreenLight Initiative, a Nigerian non-profit organization that is keen on saving lives through the prevention of violent deaths and injuries. Simon is part of the Youth Coalition’s Youth Leadership Board.

 
 

Iván Víquez Solórzano
Ivan is the Senior Project Manager of YOURS - Youth for Road Safety. He is a very experienced project manager and has experience in branding. As the Senior Project Manager, he will support the Project Director in leading key projects and activities of the Global Youth Coalition while also updating other members of the team and the organization about the developments of these different initiatives. He is currently leading the Local Actions project.

 
 

Sana’a Khasawneh
Sana'a is a young road safety advocate from Jordan. She works as a junio project manager at YOURS. She has been selected as the first ambassador for the European Year for Youth 2022 to recognize her voluntary work and initiatives in areas related to sustainability, eco-tourism, and road safety. She has also been awarded the best film prize for the youth category at the Global Road Safety Film Festival 2022. She believes in meaningful youth empowerment and engagement as an important pillar to achieving the goal of the 2nd decade of action for road safety. Currently, she is leading the Global Youth Coalition and engaging with young leaders working closely with their local communities to generate impact at the grassroots level.

 


The Selection Committee was made up of our partners; Antoine Sautenet from the MICHELIN Corporate Foundation, Oceane Eugenie from TotalEnergies Foundation, Aleksandra Golovliova from the FIA Foundation, Floor Lieshout, Manpreet Darroch, and Raquel Barrios from YOURS, and Linda Nekesa Masibo and Alex Ayub from the Youth Leadership Board. 

 
 

Dr. Antoine Sautenet
Chief Sustainability Officer, MICHELIN
Mr. Sautenet was previously a chargé de mission at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and an Associate Researcher at the French Institute of International Relations. He also teaches international commercial law at the Hanoi School of Foreign Trade and has published a book on the strategic partnership between Europe and emerging Asian nations. With dual training in European law and law from the WTO (University of Rennes I) and in economic management (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan), he taught in European and international law, including the University of Rennes and worked as a visiting scholar in Thailand at the Center for European Studies at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok.

 
 

Oceane Eugenie
International Projects Manager, TotalEnergies Foundation
Oceane is a licensed Safe Mobility Supporter by the Programme VIA France. She is a graduate of the Stratégies Internationales et Diplomatie, Relations et affaires internationales. She served as a Multimedia Communication Manager, Project Manager, and Web Designer of the Dynamisme des Jeunes Solidaires du Togo and was part of the applied research program at Le Monde Diplomatique.

 
 

Aleksandra Golovliova
Global Public Policy and Advocacy, FIA Foundation
Alexandra worked with the United Nations Special Envoy as a research policy analyst, global public policy and advocacy officer, and global public policy and advocacy manager. She was a delegate at the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) Youth Leaders Summit and has previously worked as a project officer for the Unrepresented Nations and People’s Organization (UNPO). She served as a Policy Assistant for the European Institute of Public Administration and as the Foreign Affairs Officer for the Lithuanian Embassy to Germany.

 
 

Alex Ayub
Alex currently works with the Kenya Red Cross Society - National Youth as a Programmes Coordinator. He is a lawyer by profession and is also a Star Rating for Schools (SR4S) Master Trainer and Road Safety Facilitator. In his work and in everything he does, Alex believes that all human beings deserve a fair and just environment, that allows and enables them to explore, tap and develop their innate potential. “That's why I do what I do”.

 
 

Linda Nekesa Masibo
Linda is a road safety professional and advocates from Kenya working to improve road safety with a focus on the global south. Passionate about active youth engagement in achieving Sustainable Development Goals. Linda had already served the Youth Coalition as a regional leader for Europe from 2021 - 2022. Linda, from Kenya, is a master’s student at Hasselt University in Belgium studying transportation sciences specializing in road safety in the Global South. She is doing her master’s under a full scholarship from VLIR-UOS. She has a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and is currently an urban mobility intern at the Africa regional office of the World Resources Institute.

 
 

Floor Lieshout
Floor is a native of The Netherlands and holds an engineering degree. He started his road safety career as a youth advocate when he was 18 years old. He has been a social entrepreneur for more than a decade, leading YOURS as its founder and Executive Director. He helped create several NGOs nationally and globally to prevent road traffic injuries, worked at the World Health Organization as Technical Officer at the Violence and Injury Prevention unit, and has two years of experience within the private sector at a large international consultancy firm.

 
 

Raquel Barrios
Raquel is the Projects Director of YOURS - Youth for Road Safety. She was born in Nicaragua but she currently lives in Madrid. She has always worked in the non-profit sector with different development causes, such as poverty, inequalities, children's rights, and sustainable cities and communities. Most of her experience was developed in the various roles she was given at TECHO and Save the Children, working with youth and children worldwide, but especially in the Latin American region. Her expertise in organizational management, project strategy, and operations. 

 
 

Manpreet Darroch
Manpreet is an award-winning campaigner who has been working in youth and road safety for over ten years. He has worked globally to champion the cause of meaningful youth participation in road safety decision-making. He began at YOURS in 2009 heading up social action campaigns and developing the multi-award-winning YOURS Capacity Development Programme. As the Capacity Development Director at YOURS, Manpreet has worked to develop a range of training materials to engage youth actively in road safety through a brain-friendly action-orientated methodology and has trained youth champions for road safety in more than 10 countries.

 
 


The Local Actions winners will receive a maximum of €5,000 each to fund their project. The budget must be aligned and respond to the proposed activities that will ensure the achievement of the project's final goal.

Apart from funding, the winners will also receive the following; (1) Capacity development opportunities where the winners can attend sessions that present pro-tips to implement a project plan - this will be led by the YOURS staff and previous Local Actions winners, (2) Project plan sessions where the Youth Coalition will support the winners in developing a road map to ensure a successful project, and (3) Mentorship, where the Youth Coalition will support in areas such as communication, fundraising, networking, youth participation, and more.


 
 


The Local Actions project would not have been possible without the support of our partners; our initiator YOURS - Youth for Road Safety, our Technical Partner the World Health Organization (WHO), our Programme Partners Michelin Corporate Foundation and TotalEnergies Foundation, and our Partner FIA Foundation. 

 
 
Maolin Macatangay