30/09/2022 News
Road safety: First competition and first podium for OGFA!
- Road accidents are the leading cause of death among young people worldwide. Safety is a core value at TotalEnergies, and our aim is to reduce the number of road accident victims through prevention campaigns that address young people in particular.
- VIA Créative, the international competition to raise awareness of road safety for 10-18 year-olds, is open to local schools and associations.
- A team of five young people supported by OGFA, a social & civic association based in Pau, won the second prize in France.
On September 23, Thierry Renard, Site Manager of the TotalEnergies complex in Pau, awarded Bazoumana, Mamadou, Benjamin, Bouba and Abdul their certificates of participation in the international road safety competition, VIA Créative. The event was held on the premises of the OGFA (Organization for the Management of Foyers amitiés) and attended by Céline Merzi, deputy manager, Marlène Petit, partnership, volunteering and patronage missions advisor at the OGFA, and Marie-Line Reiffel, professor of French as a foreign language, who entered the young people in the contest and supported them all the way to the podium.
The VIA program and contest
Every year, 1.35 million people die on roads worldwide and road accidents are the leading cause of death among 5-29 year-olds. Raising awareness of road safety among children as early on as possible is the leitmotiv of the VIA. This road safety program, created in 2018 by the Fondation Michelin and the Fondation TotalEnergies, is now up and running in 35 countries, and over 265,000 students have been trained.
The VIA Créative contest helps promote the entire program (four, two-hour modules), by inviting students from around the world to think about a way of raising awareness among young people and adults, of pedestrian safety on the way to school. The contestants, in teams of up to five students, had to come up with a road safety message and express it creatively on a poster. Their finished poster was accompanied by an explanatory video of their creative process.
The OGFA and its winners
The association oversees the running of about 40 social and medico-social establishments in the Pau region, grouped into six hubs: The Social watch and emergency accommodation hub, the Childhood-family hub, the Isolated people hub, the Mental disabilities hub, the Migrants hub and the Inclusion hub. The OGFA’s mission is to listen to issues pertaining to precariousness and social exclusion. As part of the actions to foster inclusion, Marie-Line Reiffel chose the VIA contest to support Unaccompanied Minors from the West African coast (Gambia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea Bissau and Guinea Conakry).
The prize award ceremony was an opportunity to congratulate the professor and to encourage these young people to become road safety ambassadors. Well done again to them all!
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