17/11/2017

For a safe trip to and from school

Star Rating for Schools (SR4S) is a mobile application, developed by the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP), used to measure and communicate risk children are exposed to when traveling to and from school.

This is the first time the SR4S app is tested in Latin America. As part of the "Safe Children in Traffic in Latin America" campaign, the iRAP team worked in coordination with Florencia Lambrosquini, Research Coordinator at the Fundación, and field agents from FACTUM consultancy group to implement the use of SR4S.

After conducting the test in Uruguay, Lambrosquini traveled to Buenos Aires to provide training to 8 participants of the SR4S that will be assessing 29 schools in Argentina in November.

The program "Safe Children in Traffic in Latin America" aims to generate evidence about road risks for children, to disseminate evidence through promotion and media campaigns, and to develop a regional knowledge management platform to generate changes in policies and practices for safer roads.

SR4S road tests and the assessment of road infrastructure in the project´s schools will help the Fundación to generate tangible evidence and data on the risks children face when traveling to school. Apart from implementing the SR4S, the Fundación is also carrying out a non-participant observational study focused on road users´ behavior, including drivers, pedestrians and commercial transport service providers that represent a risk for children on their way to school.

Results from the assessment and the behavioral study will provide input for the Fundación´s child road safety campaign to be implemented in 2018.

Also, the Fundación helped translating the SR4S Manual into Spanish, thus making its use possible in other Spanish-speaking countries and communities. It also provided iRAP with feedback on use in different contexts something that has proven to be fundamental to improve the application´s development.

While working with iRAP, Lambrosquini, said that "iRAP´s tool is very useful and the information collected represents a very important contribution. Having iRAP representatives in Montevideo for the first training session on how to correctly enter the information was fundamental. Our joint work will surely contribute to obtain better data and to make its use simpler for other organizations."

Commenting on the joint work, Julio Urzúa, iRAP´s Regional Director said: "The work started with Fundación Gonzalo Rodríguez in Montevideo, Uruguay, is crucial for iRAP and for the development of the Star Rating for Schools app, since it will be use in Latin America for the first time. There´s no doubt the results from this assessment will be an opportunity to improve road safety in schools and to have safer school trips for children".

Evidence based programming is one of the key principles of the Foundation’s grant making. Partnerships and collaborative work, like the one between iRAP and FGR play a critical role in facilitating knowledge exchange and local capacity building to bring about the impact of the Foundation’s grant making. The iRAP star rating app was sponsored by FedEx together with the FIA Foundation and the Child Health Initiative.