This year, my last as Chairman, has been one of considerable achievement for the FIA Foundation. The advocacy targets we set for the Make Roads Safe campaign have been ambitious, but the FIA Foundation, together with our many partners, has succeeded in securing a UN Ministerial Conference on global road safety and in pushing the issue of road traffic injury higher up the international political agenda than ever before.
FIA Foundation Chairman Rosario Alessi speaking at the Making Roads Safe event in London
In 2001 the establishment of the FIA Foundation fortuitously coincided with an initiative by the World Health Organization to make road safety a recognised global public health issue. In the following years the FIA Foundation worked closely with WHO, funding their road injury prevention work and the 2004 World Report on road traffic injury prevention. The Foundation proposed and co-financed the first UN Global Road Safety Week. We supported the UN Regional Commissions and the newly mandated UN Road Safety Collaboration. We have worked with the World Bank and a few (too few) donor governments to establish the Global Road Safety Facility. We set up the Commission for Global Road Safety and launched the Make Roads Safe campaign. I am immensely proud of this track record in working collaboratively to improve global road safety.
While the Foundation’s road safety work is now well established, our environmental programme has also developed this year, with a new Global Fuel Economy Initiative building on our work with the UNEP Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles and our support for independent emissions testing of new cars. I hope that over the coming years the FIA Foundation can help to catalyse policy changes in the environmental field as we are doing in road safety.
None of the Foundation’s activities can progress without the support of our colleagues and partners around the world and I would like to thank all those who have worked with the FIA Foundation to deliver our charitable objectives.
As I retire as the FIA Foundation’s inaugural Chairman I look back with great satisfaction at what has been achieved since the charity’s establishment eight years ago; our growing reputation for independent and groundbreaking advocacy; our support for wide ranging research and life-saving interventions; our valuable partnerships across the world.
I have no doubt that, with your help, the Foundation will continue to develop and to succeed in the years ahead.
Rosario Alessi
Outgoing Chairman
FIA Foundation