Road Safety Week: the Perth Edition
Last week on the blog we shared about some of the awesome activity that happened around Aotearoa for Road Safety Week. This week we are sharing something else from that week that was underway just a little bit further away! Donna and Vic were lucky enough to attend and present at the WA Youth Summit: ‘Road Safety Starts with Me’ in Perth during Australia’s own National Road Safety Week. Read on to hear more about their trip!
Around September last year, we started to engage with Natalie and Melissa at the Western Australia Road Safety Commission as they were interested in learning more about what we do at Kaitiaki o Ara/SADD. They were particularly interested in our programme as they are looking at establishing a youth advocacy and leadership road safety programme in WA, as well as beginning planning for the first ever youth road safety summit for this year’s National Road Safety Week. In Australia, National Road Safety Week is celebrated right across the country but each year there is a different state who ‘hosts’ the campaign. 2023 was WA’s year and they were determined to deliver an incredible week of events.
Fast forward a few months and a few more video calls between our two countries and we had locked in plans to visit Perth. We were invited to deliver a session at the youth summit on the design thinking problem solving model as well as meeting with the RSC team to share with them loads about our organisation, how we engage young people, about our resources and the different programmes we deliver.
Straight off the 7 hour flight from Auckland to Perth on the Sunday evening we attended the National Road Safety Week launch at Government House. This was a great way to kick of the week of events, with guest speakers and a procession through the Government House gardens, lined with yellow lanterns to represent the lives tragically lost on WA roads. One thing we did notice throughout the week was the strong support for the campaign throughout the city. There were flags on all the streetlamps, digital billboards and many key buildings lit up in yellow to acknowledge the significance of the week.
We spent the Monday with Nat and Jo from the RSC and had a great time chatting through our programmes, how we have got to where we are today and the learnings we have encountered along the way. They have some awesome ideas for what they could do to get young people more involved in road safety peer education and advocacy and we’re so excited to see what they go on to achieve, we’ll be staying in touch with them while they start their journey.
We also were lucky to meet and chat with Adrian Warner, Road Safety Commissioner for Western Australia. Check out the RSC LinkedIn post here.
The youth summit was a fantastic experience, around 800 young people were bussed into Perth city to the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre where they were exposed to a wide range of different road safety presentations, workshops, a marketplace and more. The focus on youth action and peer support was evident on the day with a call to action empowering the young people to step up for road safety. We had a great time delivering our workshop, ‘design your own road safety solution’, as well as meeting loads of people working in the road safety space in WA and taking the opportunity to share about all the good work our young people achieve back home.
Our workshop focused on how young people can plan and execute road safety activities that meet their own communities’ needs. We took participants through a design-thinking model, helping them to understand the road safety problems faced by people in their communities, narrowing down their target audience and then planning solutions/activities that would work best for their chosen audience. The workshop was a good taster of this approach for young people, giving them the tools and encouragement to take ownership of creating road safety messaging and activities for their peers.
All in all, we had a great time in Perth and really enjoyed having the opportunity to share what we do back in Aotearoa. We’re so proud as an organisation to be able to influence other countries with our mahi and having so many inspiring youth projects, activities and achievements to share about is just incredible. Thank you so much to the WA Road Safety Commission for trusting in us to participate in your event and for giving us the opportunity to support you with your own youth road safety goals!