
Road Safety Institute "Panos Mylonas" in collaboration with Scouting Ireland and the Greek Scouts Network (“Soma Hellinon Proskopon”) under the auspices of the United Nations, organized for the third time in a global level (after Sweden in 2011 and Geneva in March 2013) a road safety workshop for Scouts in MOOT Canada, attended by participants aged 18 to 25 years. Scope of this global project is to engage scouts from all over the world to take action for road safety, as well as create strong bonds with WOSM (World Organisation of the Scout Movement) in order to undertake and fund road safety actions in the whole world.
The workshop has gained attendance and interest from a variety of people with different educational and cultural backgrounds in terms of road safety, which makes this action particularly important. Up until now the people who have visited the workshop are young people from Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Lichtenstein, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cambodia, Taiwan, Egypt, Oman, Luxembourg and Lebanon.
All participants have embraced with great enthusiasm the workshop’s activities which apart from experiential activities, include also active discussion of the differences between countries and the ability of the Leaders and members of the Scout Network to implement awareness programmes and campaigns in their respective countries.
“This workshop is the best among the others we have visited. I had never imagined that a workshop for Road Safety could be so interesting, especially for me, since I come from a country where road safety is an educational issue already in young ages” said a participant from Sweden. A young man from Brazil commented “I wish we had the chance to learn such things in my country as well”, while a participant from Oman added “We would love to cooperate with you and maybe you could train us on what we have to do to cover the gaps in Oman’s Road Safety System”.
The Institute’s team was consisted of Evgenios Petoumenos (Programmes Coordinator of R.S.I. “Panos Mylonas”), Aris Kopanakis (volunteer, senior year student of Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics, University of Patras), Elena Georgiadi (volunteer, Political Studies and International Relations 325graduate, University of the Peloponnese), Steven Lenihan, Callum Ryan and Denise Delaney (Leaders of Scouting Ireland). The workshop has ran for 2 weeks having reached more than 300 young people in 2 hour sessions.
The President V.Danelli-Milonas will hold a presentation and a speech concerning this program in September in Geneva with the participation of national representatives and experts of Road Safety of all UN members.
