T-TRIID Final Report – Impact assessment of Kids’ Court road safety interventions

Africa has the highest rate of road deaths of all of the world’s regions. Mozambique has a higher rate of road deaths than the average for Africa. Child pedestrians are among the most vulnerable groups of road users.

Through the Kids’ Court programme, Amend worked at the highest risk schools to educate and empower children to deliver road safety messages to drivers in Maputo, Mozambique’s capital city. In partnership with the Traffic Police, drivers who are found driving recklessly, using a mobile phone while driving, or not wearing a seatbelt, are required, ‘rather than receiving a fine’ to face a court of child judges.

With the support of the Transport-Technology Research Innovation for Development (T-TRIID) initiative, the Kids’ Court programme has been implemented at five schools in Maputo, and a study has been carried out to evaluate the programme’s impact. The evaluation involved surveys, focus group discussions and key informant interviews with children, teachers, parents, drivers and police officers.

Analysis of the information collected through the evaluation indicates that the Kids’ Court is an effective way to supplement school road safety lessons. The findings reveal an almost 18% increase in knowledge among children who participated as Kids’ Court ‘judges’, and an increase in children’s confidence in the responses that they gave to road safety-related statements.

Those involved in the Kids’ Court recognise that the programme has a positive impact on drivers’ knowledge and behaviour. In addition, the programme empowers children to talk about road safety with their families and friends and is an effective way of disseminating road safety messages to the wider community.

Amend presented the findings of this study at the Sixth Global Meeting of the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety and is actively pursuing ways to scale up the programme in Mozambique and extend it to other African countries.