How is the implementation of the ROADS FOR GIRLS project?

We caught up with one of our Local Actions winners, Kenny Mulinde, to see how his project ROADS FOR GIRLS has been progressing this year.

The Roads for Girls project is being implemented in Apac district-Northern Uganda, to build upon the success of the #BeRoadSmartUG campaign, a local actions winning project 2021, that has promoted women’s rights and road safety in Kampala, using creative activism to raise awareness of women’s rights and safe mobility.

The project is currently advocating with key decision makers in Kampala through a petition pushing for a gendered transport system that works and responds to the safety needs of female road users, by enacting policies that guarantee the safety of girls and women from uninvited verbal and physical attacks.

Read the full transcript of our conversation;

1. This project is the 2nd Local Action for you. Briefly describe how the two projects connected, and what makes you passionate about gender equality.
My first local action project promoted women’s rights and road safety in Kampala using creative activism to raise awareness of women’s rights and safe mobility. Unlike the first project, Roads For Girls is the first project that specifically addresses women’s Rights around public safety issues among the rural populations within the Apac District.

The goal of this project is to reduce road-related deaths of young people and promote women’s rights to safer mobility free of harassment and violence in Apac. Through this project, we want to promote the possibility of roads being safe spaces for girls and women. We are implementing this project through youth participation in women’s rights and road safety management. We were able to achieve this through awareness creation and advocacy with key authorities in Apac District and the Ministry of Works and Transport by February 2023.

Through various actions, we’ve disseminated and popularized the SDG 5 Policy Brief, the Global Youth Statement for Road Safety, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030.

2. How is this project different from your project last year?

The #BeRoadSmartUG project came at a time when Uganda was taking in serious damages and disruptions from the Covid-19 Pandemic. This included lockdowns, social gathering restrictions, school closures, and the constant threat of health complications due to the covid infections. This situation affected the implementation of the project and we had to adjust the implementation around this to ensure the delivery of a high-quality and life-changing program.

We had to organize the campaign online. We worked remotely most of the time; this was quite different for many of our team members. Adopting the use of new technologies and online mobilization and organization tools. Because of this, the delivery and outcomes of this project were unique. It introduced us to digital activism through the use of creative advocacy tools that would impact change. 

This year, we are not experiencing any lockdowns or social restrictions of any kind. However, the post-covid environment has left a financial burden and loss on many people. This means that getting people’s attention to respond to the project with active participation has been difficult.

In the Apac District, hundreds of young people were not able to return to school after the long school closures due to teenage pregnancies, early marriages, and extreme poverty. So breaking through this situation with road safety issues has not been well received. However, we have managed to keep them engaged and involved by continuously reaching out and proposing alternatives through the Youth Arts Movement Uganda. This not only propels the Roads for Girls project but also provides income-generating skills for youth so that they can better themselves.

At this point, we have an additional 134 youth pledge their support to the cause and joined the Road Smart Ninjaz Community. A few have also joined the Global Youth Coalition For Road Safety.  

3. You are fond of arts and creativity. Tell us about how you employ art to spread road safety awareness. 
As an artist and as someone working with a youth network of creatives, I and my team have continuously explored the potential of the arts in creating social change. We believe that art is a powerful communication and advocacy tool that empowers people to speak their power. They use these non-violent and peaceful creative activism interventions in the form of words, lyrics, visuals, and performances. 

Within the creative component during the World Youth Assembly for Road Safety in 2020, I realized that art could potentially be used to create awareness about the dangers youth face on our roads. I saw that it can also be used to communicate the urgency for youth participation and intervention to reduce road crashes, change attitudes towards road safety measures, and influence policies that make traveling safe and possible for all ages and user groups, in order to reduce the number of road injuries and deaths globally. 

Because of this, all my Local Actions have had an artistic component in them as a strategy to massively mobilize, organize, and rally young people in Uganda to claim their right to safer roads. The project encouraged youth to meaningfully interact with our campaign activities and kept them engaged through fun-filled and life-changing actions like rap music, spoken word, dance, film, social media tools, and digital platforms. We have used these creative expressions to relay information on women’s rights and road safety with powerful advocacy and awareness creation messages.

4. How is your community engagement with your project? Are you facing any challenges considering that you are tackling a serious issue: harassment and violence in transportation? What do you do to overcome these challenges?
Apac is a typical patriarchal community where girls’ and women’s rights take a back seat! But youth want to change this and this Local Actions project is a catalyst for the change these young people desire. We empower them to speak against the violence and discriminatory actions against girls and women, against things that attack their sovereignty and freedoms, and against forces that limit their participation in daily life.

Before the project started, we had several youth consultations that informed us of the key issues affecting girls’ and women’s safety in Apac streets. So, the Roads for Girls Project was designed to promote safe cycling and walking for girls and women in Apac. Through the Roads For Girls project, youth are exposing the dangers they face on roads as they travel to schools, markets, healthcare, and other aspects of public life. This also covers issues like sexual harassment, rape, physical attacks, and violence inflicted on them in the community.

The project offers road safety capacity-building workshops targeting youth leaders and local authorities in Apac designed to improve their understanding of women’s rights, gender perspectives, and road safety decision-making and management.

We are creating mass awareness about women’s rights, road safety, and youth leadership in realizing Sustainable Development Goals on Gender and Equality, Road Safety, and Sustainable Cities by organizing dialogues with authorities and petitioning them to position strategies that respond to girls and women’s safety on the roads, capacity development workshops to equip the youth with skills in leadership, advocacy, and creative activism. 

During one of the dialogues, youth in Apac informed us that there had never been any road safety awareness programs in their community. They said that even when the number of crashes grows day by day, authorities were not responsive. The participants also expressed a concern that Apac, being a traditionally patriarchal community, violence against women has been normalized and victims were silenced by male-dominated authorities. This contradicts the National and International efforts to end gender inequality and violence against girls and women. 

The Roads For Girls project gives youth in Apac a platform to claim their space, amplify their voices for greater observation and protection of women’s rights to safer mobility, and empower youth to creatively promote roads as safe-public living spaces for all. We are working with authorities to improve law enforcement on street violence and traffic regulations to save more youth lives in Apac and beyond.

5. What would be your message to our members?
Young people are under attack on both rural and urban roads in our countries. Every journey could potentially turn bad because of a collision with a speeding vehicle or instances of sexual harassment. This limits our full participation in daily life and further worsens the already existing inequalities and gender-based violence in our communities.

We are still forced to use death trap cars, polluted public spaces, and unsafe roads. Our community roads are not adequately lit or labeled with proper road signs and yet they hold access to our schools, markets, and workplaces leaving us exposed to crashes and street violence.

I know that we have tried to make our voices heard but more still needs to be done so that we are adequately consulted and engaged in solving global crises which include challenges in road safety and sustainable mobility. The only way around the danger we face on the world’s roads is if we keep claiming our space for meaningful participation in solving the problem. Our valuable contribution will inspire confidence in youth around the world to take up tools and mobilize, organize, and lead local actions with their peers to cause a change in their communities.

The Youth Coalition is committed to providing capacity development workshops, resources, and tools to make this change possible. It does not matter how big or small your idea is, just go out there and get your hands dirty doing something for social good.