Education Vietnam Project #4954

Give a Vietnamese child a helmet; save a life

by AIP Foundation

Project Report | Mar 3, 2025
Helmets for Kids: Two Decades of Impact in Vietnam

By Trinh Vo | Development Assistant

Every year, there are 2,081 children who lose their lives on Vietnam’s roads. Nearly half of these fatalities were caused by head injuries, mainly due to the lack of helmet use. Ensuring that every child has access to high-quality helmets and understands the importance of wearing them correctly is critical to saving lives and fostering a culture of road safety.

As a proactive step toward protecting children, AIP Foundation is proud to partner with Johnson & Johnson to redefine helmet safety progress across Vietnam through the “Helmets for Kids” program, an initiative dedicated to equipping students with standardized, high-quality helmets and road safety education. In 2024, we are proud to celebrate 13 years of impact and progress, marking the successful conclusion of this long-running program.

The focus in this final year has remained on vulnerable communities in Northern Vietnam, ensuring every child, every student, has a safe journey to and from school. Throughout 2024, 5,250 helmets were distributed of which 2,800 were ECE 22 standard helmets. This model, proven to absorb higher impact forces, provides better protection in case of crashes.

On November 30, 2024, a helmet handover ceremony was held at Tran Nhat Duat high school (Yen Bai Province). This was the biggest Helmets for Kids program event for 2024 with nearly 1,000 students gathered, underscoring the program’s dedication to enhancing road safety and promoting a culture of safe and quality helmet wearing among youth in Vietnam. The event also featured interactive training sessions, emphasizing proper helmet use, road safety awareness, and hands-on demonstrations. Prior to this, a total of 3,950 helmets were sufficiently distributed to students.

Johnson & Johnson has been a longtime and trusted partner of AIP Foundation. Since 2012, the program has reached 109 schools across 9 provinces in Vietnam, providing 84,326 quality helmets to students, teachers and school staff - saving an estimated 902 students and teachers from potential brain injury.

The Helmets for Kids program leaves a lasting legacy of improved road safety and community engagement in Vietnam. While this chapter comes to a close, we remain committed to advocating for road safety and ensuring that every child has access to the necessary resources for a safe journey to and from school.

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Nov 4, 2024
Promoting Safe and Sustainable Student Commutes

By Katelyn Sullivan | Development Coordinator

In Vietnam, over 17 million children commute between home and school 2-4 times daily. Many children share the road with speeding trucks, with no sidewalks to walk on going to school or proper infrastructure for safe cycling. Across the country, many young cyclists lack the knowledge and practical experience to navigate these busy roads safely on their school journeys. These issues create many risks for young cyclists and highlight the urgent need for improved safety measures and community support for safer cycling routes.

In an effort to continue safeguarding students’ safer journeys to school and promote greener mobility, AIP Foundation has joined forces with the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and FIA Foundation to launch the Ride Safe – Bike Safety program in Gia Lai province Vietnam. The program is made possible through funding from the Safe and Sustainable Mobility Grants programme by the FIA and supported by the FIA Foundation.

A workshop held on September 10 launched the program, introducing the program to approximately 100 stakeholders including government delegates and Gia Lai province secondary school staff. Program activity highlights include the development of a Bike Safely GPS tracker app, which will conduct surveys at 11 project schools, and educational training on safe cycling skills at 12 schools in Phu Thien district, where more than 60% of students commute to school via bicycle.

The program aims to influence provincial authorities to prioritize identification of high-risk zones and subsequent investments to improve bicycling infrastructure. Ride Safe - Bike Safety also hopes to encourage greener and more active modes of transportation amongst student populations. These initiatives align with the targets set for Vietnam’s current 2030 Road Safety Strategy and 2050 Net Zero commitments.

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Jul 9, 2024
Making Safe School Zones a Reality

By Misha Rawal | Development Coordinator

Following its global launch, the Safe School Zones Guide is now being put into action. In May 2024, AIP Foundation, in collaboration with the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport and the Ho Chi Minh City Traffic Safety Committee, proudly inaugurated the first school zone modifications carried out at four project schools using the Safe School Zones Guide. Two years in the making, Vietnam’s Safe School Zones Guide (SSZ Guide) is a comprehensive technical blueprint for urban planners, engineers, and policymakers to address the issue of safe mobility around schools across the country.

The four project schools were identified as high-risk following a city-wide assessment under AI&Me, a program that incorporates youth participation to identify unsafe school commutes. The results showed that 57 schools in Ho Chi Minh City will require critical safety upgrades with a majority receiving 1-2 star ratings using the Star Rating for Schools methodology (with 1 being the lowest and least safe rating and 5 being the safest).

The modifications around the four project schools (Le Quy Don Secondary School, Tran Quang Khai High School, Phu Lam Primary School, and Mac Dinh Chi High School) represent the start of a series of life-saving actions to improve commuting safety for the millions of students, parents, teachers, and communities that travel to and from school daily. Building upon the project’s assessment results, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transportation will develop a plan to improve infrastructure for other school zones in the city.

In addition, this program aims to support the Ministry of Transport’s action plan to implement Directive No. 31/CT-TTg. This directive was officially released by the Prime Minister and calls for all relevant agencies to review and amend Vietnam’s current technical standards and regulations for school zones. Following the announcement, the Ministry of Transport issued Decision 64, instructing all 63 provinces in Vietnam to provide detailed reports on their local assessments and action plans for enhancing school zone safety within their respective jurisdictions.

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