Zebra Crossings

As a kid growing up in New York City I was taught to cross streets at the corner crosswalk and to look both ways. While crosswalks exist in many developing countries – sometimes called Zebra Crossings (think: striping) – the message to use them is not reaching children as it should. On average more than 1,000 young people a day die from road traffic injuries worldwide.

With road safety a core competency at FedEx, we are committed to helping address this issue. We work year-round in seven countries (China, India, Brazil, the Philippines, S. Korea, Canada and the U.S.) with an organization called Safe Kids Worldwide in support of their Walk This Way child pedestrian safety campaign, a program we helped them launch in 2000.

On November 4th, Safe Kids Foundation in India delivered for the first time their child pedestrian road safety lessons in Hindi. The children benefiting from these lessons attend a non-profit day care center that provides formal and informal education to kids aged 4 to 16. The picture associated with this post was colored-in by one of these kids, a child now better prepared to cope with the traffic in Mumbai.

Established in 2006, Safe Kids Foundation has reached tens of thousands of children with road safety messages through the FedEx-sponsored Walk this Way program.