Deployed worldwide by the TotalEnergies Foundation, VIA is an education program designed to make it safer for young people to travel to and from school.
Out of the 270,000 pedestrians killed worldwide each year, many are children on their way to school, and most of them in the southern hemisphere. Broken families, professional careers that will never happen – unprotected mobility has countless consequences and the cost for the community is huge.
To fight against road insecurity, the leading cause of death among young people worldwide, the VIA programme for safe mobility works closely with young people to improve the conditions in which they travel to and from school, by bringing the issue to the attention of young people themselves and raising the awareness of all members of the educational community.
A scheme deployed in 22 countries in 2024 in partnership between the TotalEnergies Foundation program and the company's subsidiaries
The countries deploying the VIA programme are selected from among TotalEnergies' anchor territories on the basis of their accident rate and level of development: Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Congo, Guinea Conakry, Equatorial Guinea, India, Lebanon, Libya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Malawi, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda.
Clear-cut objectives
The aim of the VIA Program in 2024 is to:
Local deployment in three phases
The program is rolled out in three phases, which include:
- The observation phase during which the ambassadors, with the help of the educational community, conduct an assessment of the risks surrounding their journeys to and from school. Divided into two groups of 10, the ambassadors take a discovery walk around the school to raise their awareness of the dangers. Following the discovery walk, the ambassadors draw up a map of the current risks, that the school makes available to all the students.
- The recommendation phase during which the ambassadors make recommendations on how to improve the safety of journeys to and from school. These recommendations concern school signage, school access, road users’ compliance with rules, and the responsible behaviors students need to adopt with regard to the risks encountered.
- The awareness-raising actions phase implemented by the ambassadors for their schoolmates and for the entire educational community.
Presentation and debate:
- Presentation of observations and recommendations to all pupils: Presentation/debate in class or at the school assembly.
- Presentation of observations and recommendations to the school management / with the municipality or the police
Artistic actions:
- Production and distribution of a prevention poster aimed at the school's pupils and dealing with one of the identified risks
- Hip hop, dance, awareness-raising song, theatre skit performed in front of all the pupils or parents
- Mural painting in the school or in front of the school
Volunteering initiatives:
Call for volunteers from pupils or parents to help younger children cross in front of the school when access is dangerous (e.g. school on a bend) and/or to supervise access to the school or to avoid double-parking or invading the pavement.
The VIA Finals
The VIA Finals are a key opportunity to recognise the work of participating schools and to share observations, recommendations and concrete actions with all stakeholders.
The finals are organised first at national and then at international level. Juries bring together representatives of partner NGOs, TotalEnergies subsidiaries and representatives of education and transport authorities to select the ambassadors' contributions that best reflect the values of the programme. The VIA international finals bring together the winning schools from each participating country.
Specific collaboration with UNESCO and its regional offices also means that education and sustainable development experts are included on the jury. /The school chosen in each country to take part in the international finals will receive specific financial support to help it roll out one of its awareness-raising initiatives on a larger scale, and benefit from media coverage that will enable it to have an impact on a greater number of young people in the country.
The 2024 International Finals will be organised from 22 November 2024.
The TotalEnergies Foundation will be inviting representatives of the young ambassadors from the winning school in the VIA international finals to Paris to meet with various players in the fields of education (UNESCO) and road safety (United Nations Special Envoy for Road Safety), and to take part in various cultural and discovery workshops.
International ambassadors
In 2022, the ambassadors of the Les Praticiens school in Dakar and in 2023 the ambassadors of the CSI Ewart Global School in Chennai, India.