NEW DELHI, India – September 3, 2024

Key achievements from the VIA Global Road Safety Educational Programme (VIA programme) implemented in Thailand by AIP Foundation were successfully showcased at the global Safety 2024 Conference. Mirjam Sidik, Chief Executive Officer at AIP Foundation presented the poster‘VIA Global Road Safety Education Programme: Innovating education for next-generation road safety change-makers in Thailand,’ poster during the second day of the conference.

In Thailand, road crashes are the leading cause of death among youth aged 10-19, killing 10,323 Thai adolescents from 2015 to 2019. Providing road safety education to youth is one of the strategies to reduce fatalities and injuries incurred from road crashes sustainably. The VIA programme aims to provide an innovative approach that can inspire students to apply their road safety knowledge in daily life. Funded by the Michelin Corporate Foundation and the TotalEnergies Foundation, VIA is a global student-centered road safety education programme for students aged 10-18, building on internationally recognized child road safety education best practices. VIA was developed by a consortium of road safety and educational experts and is managed by the Global Road Safety Partnership.

The VIA Poster displayed by AIP Foundation at Safety 2024 highlighted the successful implementation of the 3 phases of the VIA programme from January 2021 to October 2023 in Thailand. During this time, 10,824 students and 118 teachers from 72 schools across Thailand were trained in road safety education using VIA methods and materials. Remarkably, in the most recent phase, VIA materials are used as a resource for mandatory road safety lessons at all 22 secondary schools in Prathum Thani province. This equates to another 39,335 students accessing VIA resources, demonstrating the programme’s potential to scale and impact.

The 15th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion, commonly referred to as Safety 2024, was held between 2nd-4th September 2024 at Taj Palace, New Delhi, India. Safety 2024 was a global event focusing on worldwide attention on safety and injury prevention. This year, the conference gathered international experts in the field with a united goal of “Building a safer future for all: Equitable and sustainable strategies for injury and violence prevention.