Thanks to the ‘On the road to safety’ program, no fewer than 26,000 Madagascan schoolchildren aged 6 to 14 have had their knowledge of road safety bolstered. Primary schools in Antananarivo, the capital, and the surrounding rural areas were identified as those most at risk of road traffic accidents. When the initiative was first launched, Idéal Randriamiadana remembers that opinion was divided: “Initially, teachers and authorities were skeptical about our plans for educating the children, simply because the roads in Madagascar are cruelly lacking in essential infrastructure (traffic lights and zebra crossings). What convinced them was that we managed to get schoolchildren to realise that road safety depends on their own actions, too.”
The ABCD’s initiative is a long-term program. The progress made over the past three years speaks for itself: “We went back to assess how successful our campaign was among schoolchildren, teachers, school heads, parents and even local residents. We realised that not only had the children changed how they behaved, they had also become ambassadors of good practices and were spreading the word!” laughs Idéal. Awareness-building among teachers and children as well as the use of fun educational tools like the Safety Cube (see the Safety report in the 2015 issue of Pathways) have clearly proven to be effective. Participating establishments haven’t recorded a single traffic accident since the campaign was rolled out.
