Legacy for the Future: New partnership aims to address children’s road safety through sport and play
EASST is delighted to announce that we are joining Legacy for the Future, an initiative designed by the UEFA Foundation for Children and the adidas Foundation to help organisations advance gender equity in and through sport in their local area.
In partnership with the FIA Foundation, the project has been expanded include advocating for safer journeys to school and active mobility with a focus on collecting stories and evidence to highlight the systemic barriers women and girls face in accessing sport, getting to and from sports facilities and school and staying physically active, as well as the action required to empower them and overcome these barriers at an institutional level.
Under Legacy for the Future, our project titled ‘Beyond the School Gates’, will seek to improve road safety around football clubs and parks in Georgia and Moldova. In partnership with the Automobile Club of Moldova (ACM) and Partnership for Road Safety Foundation (PfRS) in Georgia, we will work with football federations to identify local clubs, including at least one grassroots club, with girls’ football teams and for whom access, safety and mobility may present a barrier to participating in sport. Teams will be invited to participate in a series of road safety awareness sessions delivered and co-develop road safety actions that can be delivered at games or in the community, coinciding with key moments such as World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims or UN Global Road Safety Week.
We also plan to work with Club coaches and managers to conduct road safety assessments around selected Club grounds to identify key risks to raise with local authorities and advocate for appropriate safety infrastructure or traffic management solutions.
Road safety remains a major public health challenge in both Georgia and Moldova, where road casualties remain well above the European average and girls account for almost half of child road deaths and injuries. As such, national and local authorities are taking bold steps to prioritise children’s road safety, with both countries adopting 30km/h speed limits around schools within their respective National Road Safety Action Plans.
However, beyond the school gates, children also make frequent journeys to play or train at parks and football clubs, as well as enjoying other sports and leisure activities. Many young people are making these journeys independently either walking, cycling or scooting from school or home on exposed routes with default urban speed limits of 60km/h (which are frequently exceeded by drivers) and little in the way of infrastructure to protect them from fast-moving vehicles. Through the winter these journeys are often made in the dark, creating further risks for their safety.
By focusing on safe access to sports we can seek to improve safety along these key routes where many children and young people travel, as well as addressing one of six key barriers to women’s sport identified by Adidas’ She Breaks Barriers initiative: transportation. Addressing issues of road safety from a perspective of inclusive mobility promotes more sustainable and liveable streets, whilst also protecting people from unnecessary risks. Empowering girls as leaders to highlight these issues through football could have a significant impact on influencing not only community attitudes and behaviours around road safety, but improving access to sport more widely.
We are excited to be joining this partnership with the UEFA Foundation for Children and the FIA Foundation, and look forward to implementing this work over the next 12 months.