Road Audit Conducted By Our Young Volunteers

Oct 1 : Following up on our session on Sep 10, we are very pleased to welcome the second batch of student Volunteers from St Meera’s PU College.  It is extremely heartening to see the response of these young, sincere children wanting to make a difference. Joining hands with our first batch, the team conducted the second Road Audit. We picked the Sai Baba Temple Road, and Cambridge Road in the vicinity of St Meeras which is of interest to the children.

This time, we were very happy to have Ms Anusha Jaishankar coach the team on how to conduct an audit and record the findings.  Anusha herself is an avid advocate of Road Safety. She runs Positive Strokes, an NGO which encourages good road behavior. And she also works with CoRPS (Concern for Road and Pedestrian Safety) which works in Road Safety.

The children noted various aspects : the traffic intensity – cars, two wheelers, buses, pedestrians; the state of the road and the footpaths; the signage on the street and its visibility; whether zebra crossings are required / visible; the factors creating challenges at the junction; the mix of shops, markets,offices, and public places like temples/hospitals that can affect the flow of traffic. And they came up with their suggestions for improvement.

Here is what Anusha had to say about the activity
“The road safety volunteers of The Arundhati Foundation were students or residents of Cambridge Road. Under the able guidance of Dr. Shubhangi, Mr. Sanjay, Mr. Vijay and Ms. Sandhya, fifteen volunteers spent the better part of a Saturday afternoon meticulously noting down ground realities on Cambridge Road and Sai Baba Temple Road using the CoRPS Road Safety Audit. This activity helps CoRPS star rate roads in Bangalore categorizing roads as unsafe, moderately safe and safe roads.

The expected outcome is two-fold. One, these young citizens start to notice road issues that they were otherwise turning a blind eye to, and knowing that they have the right to ask for change. Two, they realize that safety is their responsibility. To this end, it was heartening to see the volunteers take in problems and come up with possible ways to address these problems.”

Thank you dear Anusha for encouraging these young citizens. Thank you YSA and UL for helping the foundation help groom the young citizen of young India. After all as the demographic data shows, we are one of the youngest nation in the world! Youngsters are our greatest resource. If they are educated well, given solid values, and pointed in the right direction, I have no doubt that we can indeed be a nation of miracles and perform miracles.