The “Traffic Safety Ambassadors” initiative is an annual program mainly targeting secondary schools for boys in Qatar. The Traffic Safety Ambassador is selected by the school administration according to certain criteria. The Ambassador forms a working team of students at the school that includes students from all academic levels. The Qatar Transportation and Traffic Safety Center, in collaboration with the National Traffic Safety Committee at Ministry of Interior, distributes materials for raising awareness, brochures and posters , organizes workshops about leadership role and how to manage traffic safety campaigns for the participating schools. In addition, information about the safe use of the roads are provided by professional in the field of traffic safety to enhance the skills of the Traffic Safety Ambassadors and increase their ability in raising awareness among their colleagues. This initiative works on certain methods and techniques to address the intended goal.
These techniques are summarized as following:
- Youth involvement: involving high school students in the process of developing initiatives that raise awareness of solve a social problem.
- Practice and convey the knowledge gained to others: The ambassadors along with their teams attended different workshops and then applied what they learned back at their own schools.
- Fostering the competitive spirit between schools: harnessing the competitive spirit between schools to encourage innovation and creativity. Mentoring and support: a team of road safety ambassadors from Qatar University were chosen and sent to high schools in order to provide the help and support needed by the ambassadors and their teams.
- These techniques enabled the further developed of the ambassadors’ communication skills, leadership, creativity, and self-confidence. The initiative allowed the ambassadors to play the role of a student and a mentor at the same time.
