EASST Annual Report 2019

This year we celebrated 10 years of road safety capacity building and development in the EASST region. 2019 has also been another year of outstanding achievement for our EASST partners. Both FIRE AID and the Belarusian Auto Moto Touring Club (BKA) were honoured at the 2019 Prince Michael International Road Safety Awards, with FIRE AID receiving the prestigious Premier Award.

Our Annual Report covers all of these successes across each of our core project areas: children’s road safety; occupational road safety management; disability, mobility and road risk; road safety enforcement; post-crash response; sustainable mobility; and governance and capacity building.

Report highlights:

• Our 10th anniversary celebrations in April coinciding with the sixth meeting of the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety in Chania, Crete – organised locally by EASST partners Make Roads Safe Hellas.
• EASST’s first ever region-wide campaign in September 2019 aimed at
  challenging the myths around seat belt use and mobilising the public to buckle up.
• Over 25,000 children across the region using our EASST Road Safety Education Pack which has now been adopted by three EASST countries as part of their national curricula.
• We launched a free online short course to help teachers and education providers use the Pack worldwide.
• Successful advocacy by the Partnership for Road Safety influenced speed reductions around school zones in Tbilisi to 30km/h. Plus, over 30 schools have installed speed reduction measures including raised zebra crossings and traffic lights.
• In Moldova, the Automobile Club of Moldova have donated over 500 child car seats to low-income families through their web donation and distribution platform baby4baby.org.
• We launched our EASST Academy Road Safety at Work: Online Course for Managers in Georgian and delivered specialist training for waste management fleets.
• We opened a new pedestrian crossing outside Istiqlol Hospital in Dushanbe with the support of the EBRD and Safer Roads Foundation. The crossing includes audio-visual crossing signals and accessibility ramps so that it is fully inclusive of the needs of people with disabilities.
• Our partners the Belarusian Auto Moto Touring Club won a 2019 International Prince Michael Road Safety Award for their work on disability and road safety.
• With FIRE AID and other FIRE AID members we delivered 5 fire appliances to Moldova, Tajikistan and Ukraine along with 14 road traffic collision extraction sets and other equipment. These donations were accompanied by Train the Trainer training for 69 local firefighters plus 14 female rescuers in Tajikistan.
• In the West Kazakhstan Region we developed and launched the region’s first 5-year road safety strategy based on the Safe System approach in partnership with the local regional government, Shell Kazakhstan, ENI and local organisation, Gauhar Zhol.
• We welcomed the Young Generation of the World – Tashkent Branch as our local road safety partner in Uzbekistan.

And much more!

As we look towards the next decade, we will continue to nurture and assist our partners to improve road safety and sustainable trans­port in their countries. While doing so we will redouble our efforts to make linkages with safe road design for vulnerable road users; to raise awareness of the environmental impacts of road transport (training in eco-driving and highlighting air quality); and to make cities more inclusive and less vehicle-centred.

Next year EASST will be strongly represented in the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety hosted by the Swedish Government in Stockholm. We have been working for over a year to maximise the benefits of this event for our countries of operation, ensuring their voices are heard on a global stage and their unique challenges are addressed. EASST will add to the call for a continued, global focus on road safety beyond 2020, supporting the 50 by 30 campaign for renewed road safety targets. This will be vital for all our futures.