186, 300 children die each year from road traffic crashes around the world – that’s more than 500 children every day. In fact road traffic injury ranks among the top four causes of death for all children over the age of five years. The Third United Nations Road Safety Week was dedicated to the plight of children on the world's roads.

The #SaveKidsLives campaign has gathered more than 1 million signatures in support of the Child Declaration for Road Safety calling on decision makers around the world to make road safe for children. 

During the Week, hundreds of events were hosted by governments, international agencies, civil society organizations, and private companies, including the delivery of the “Child Declaration for Road Safety” to policy-makers. These events highlight WHO’s package of ten key strategies for keeping children safe on the road. After the week, the campaign continues to generate action around the world throught the 2020 Action Agenda for Road Safety.

 

 

YOURS Involvement in the Week

We were responsible for designing and creating the Save Kids Lives website, which acted as the first global campaign platform for the UN Global Road Safety Week. #SaveKidsLives was the offical campaign for the Third UN Global Road Safety Week focusing on children and offered campaigners a chance to take part in a very practical and pragmatic campaign. As well as designing the website from functional structure concept to its live implementation, we worked alongside the FIA Foundation and the World Health Organization to set the campaign's strategic direction, linking it with the global road safety community's push for road safety to be included in the Sustainable Development Goals.

We worked with a host of partners to consult with children and write the Child Declaration for Road Safety, which garnered over 1 million signatures globally.

A Global Movement

By November 2015, the number of people signed up to the #SaveKidsLives campaign had reached over 1 million supporters. Signatures in support of the Child Declaration were gathered all across the world both online and offline in a range of events organized from the grassroots to national level.

Hundreds of thousands of people took #Safies for the campaign to show their solidarity to #SaveKidsLives.

These 1 million signatures were presented to global road safety decision makers from all across the world at the Second High Level Meeting for Road Safety in Brasilia, Brazil.

Speaking at the event, global road safety campaigner Zoleka Mandela said, "No more empty commitments. No more delay. We are approaching five years into the Decade of Action for Road Safety. Road deaths are actually rising in nearly 70 countires. Where is the action? Where is the urgency?"

The #SaveKidsLives campaign was given a large feature at the meeting with leaders pledging to take action as well as mapping action to reach the Global Goal of halving road traffic deaths by 2020.

As part of the build up to the event, over 500 school children from around Brasilia came together to mark the success of the campaign but to call on decision makers to now take real action to #SaveKidsLives.

In Brazil, at an NGO rally, it was strongly expressed that the campaign should continue after the Brasilia meeting. It was decided that the campaign would continue into an action orientated phase to hold decision makers to account and to enact 5 steps to #SaveKidsLives. The campaign continues to create awareness as well as call for action to #SaveKidsLives.