18 February 2020

The 2nd World Youth Assembly for Road Safety, an entirely youth-driven convention organized by a Global Youth Taskforce of young leaders brought together 200 youth leaders from 75 countries to Stockholm, Sweden, this week. The assembly, co-coordinated by the global NGO YOURS – Youth for Road Safety and the World Health Organization, gathered youth leaders for a day of action-packed discussions, in which they explored cross-cultural solutions and made official declarations to stand up for the road safety of their own and future generations.

Ms. Minh Vo, AIP Foundation, Monitoring and Evaluation Assistant was invited to represent Vietnam as a participant and youth road safety advocate. Issues of road crash prevention and safe mobility are far from a foreign concept for Ms. Vo, who has lived and grown up in Vietnam her entire life. In Vietnam, rapid motorization over the past decade has produced a surge in road crash injuries and fatalities, creating tremendous economic and social consequences. According to the Global Status Report on Road Safety 2018, the World Health Organization estimates that road crashes result in nearly 25,000 deaths in Vietnam. Road crashes remain one of the leading causes of death for children aged 5-14 years in Vietnam, with 2,150 children in Vietnam dying in road crashes each years, as reported in the Global Burden of Disease Study for 2017.

“However, not many people know about these facts,” said Ms. Vo. “There is still poor traffic culture and low awareness of road safety despite the good progress made towards road infrastructures, vehicles and road safety policies. More efforts should be made to stop people with a great number of youth dying and getting injured on the road.”

Minh Vo first began working with AIP Foundation as an intern, developing a foundational understanding of the road safety sector and the importance of road safety interventions for improving the health outcomes of broad communities. After graduating from university, Ms. Vo joined the AIP Foundation team in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, as a Program Assistant, before transitioning to her current role as a Monitoring and Evaluations Assistant, in which she supports data collection and analysis for interventions in Vietnam and AIP Foundation’s other program countries.

Ms. Vo described, “My contributions include managing data collected across our programs in Asia that target issues ranging from helmet safety, distracted driving, speeding, and most importantly, all contribute to halving road deaths and injuries as the UN Sustainable Development Goal 3.6.” 

As part of Ms. Vo’s acceptance to the 2nd World Youth Assembly for Road Safety, she was also invited to attend the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, hosted by the Government of Sweden and the World Health Organization (WHO). The ministerial conference brought together leaders, stakeholders, and delegates to Sweden to share successes and lessons learned from implementing the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011–2020. Participants also charted future strategic directions for global road safety and defined plans for accelerating action on strategies towards 2030.

Reflecting on her participation in the 2nd World Youth Assembly for Road Safety and the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, Ms. Vo described, “I believe this is the greatest privilege I had ever had. This is a good opportunity for me to become familiar with new information, technologies, and trends in road safety around the world to better my work. It is also a unique opportunity for me to raise my voice as one of Vietnam’s youth who is passionate about road safety, and to demonstrate the energy of Vietnamese youth and commitment in solving road safety issues.”