Youth-led road safety advocacy meetings held in Uganda

Local actions winner Oliva Nalwadda facilitates a youth-led road safety advocacy meeting with the Parent-Teacher Association structure to talk about installing road safety infrastructures in the area. These structures will be put in place to protect students within the school zones and also promotes conversations on keeping students safer on their journeys to school.

The team engaged with teachers and parents as a way to work conversations on road safety into the household and within different school settings. To engage with the students, the team led interactive activities where children played road safety games to get them more interested in basic road safety rules and principles.

To improve the road safety situation around school zones, Oliva and her team from Uzima Ari also partnered with traffic police to conduct road safety projects focused on community dialogues and on raising awareness on issues around speed, public transportation, and Boda riders with concerned stakeholders.

To identify key partners, the team conducted stakeholder mapping exercises with selected “school champions”. Apart from identifying important groups, the exercise also gave members of the academe a deeper insight on different elements and aspects of road safety depending on the different sectors.

Throughout the implementation of the project, Oliva and her team experiences continued challenges because of school closures brought on by the pandemic. However, certain measures were taken to adjust and even improve the implementation of activities under the Together for Safer School Journeys Projects.

For instance, the initial initiative of leading radio sessions led to daily radio mentions that were adapted into the project as an additional mode of raising awareness on speed limits and discussing the importance of safe play zones for children. 

Two Community radios commonly known as "Kizindaalo" are being used to reach boda boda and taxi drivers with key information on speeding.