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AIP Foundation's Profile

Fostering safe and smart road users worldwide

Asia Injury Prevention Foundation (AIP Foundation) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public and providing road traffic safety resources to developing countries in Asia, Africa and South and Latin America. Greig Craft founded the organization in 1999 in Hanoi and is a US-registered 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization. Main offices are located in Hanoi and HCMC, Vietnam and a branch office is located in Bangkok, Thailand.

Affecting Change: AIP Foundation’s programs

Protec Helmets: (formally, ‘The Vietnam Safety Product Equipment Company’ or ‘VSPEC’): AIP Foundation owns a nonprofit “tropical” helmet company. The Protec assembly plant, located outside of Hanoi, produces a line of high-quality and affordable helmets designed to answer the cultural and environmental challenges in Southeast Asia against helmet use. The company employs the physically disabled and all profits flow back into AIP Foundation’s programs. The factory was built with USD 2 million worth of donations and employs approximately 100 staff. Protec has company showrooms in both Hanoi and HCMC and a nationwide network or distributors.

Policy and Advocacy: AIP Foundation has developed close working relationships with Vietnam’s Ministry of Transport, National Traffic Safety Committee (NTSC), Ministry of Health, and other relevant government agencies to develop appropriate helmet standards, including the world’s first child motorbike standard, TCVN 6979 – 2001. AIP Foundation was a major lobbying force for Resolution 32/CP, Vietnam’s mandatory helmet law that came into effect in the latter part of 2007.

These efforts also include organizing the landmark Global Road Safety Initiative Helmet Conference in Hanoi in December 2006. The recommendations of this conference were the foundation of Government Resolution 32/CP, Vietnam’s new helmet law. AIP Foundation has been recognized as a pioneer in the area of developing nation traffic safety and has participated in conferences held by the UN, the US Government, the Global Road Safety Partnership, the Make Roads Safe Campaign, the WHO, and many others.

Helmets for Kids: AIP Foundation’s signature helmet donation and road safety program in which corporations and other donor organizations sponsor free Protec helmets and traffic safety education for school children. Program components include crash investigations, monitoring & surveillance, and daily traffic safety instruction. AIP Foundation, via HFK, has donated over 350,000 helmets throughout Southeast Asia, and will soon be expanding the program to other continents.

Traffic Safety education curriculum development: Between 2001 and 2003, AIP Foundation worked closely with various Vietnamese Government ministries to develop and deploy a traffic safety curriculum to schools throughout the country. The curriculum’s materials are still used nationwide and serve as the standard for traffic safety education in Vietnam. Contrary to traditional teaching methods in Vietnam, AIP Foundation’s curriculum is interactive and requires active participation by the students. Included in our Safe Routes to School program is six weeks of traffic safety education lessons, which reinforce and solidify a child’s understanding of safe and unsafe traffic situations, traffic signs, traffic lights and zebra crossings, along with traffic safety laws, pedestrian safety and bicycle safety.

E-Learning curriculum development: AIP Foundation is developing traffic safety education software for use in classrooms. The e-Learning curriculum will provide a safe yet realistic environment for children to make decisions and learn safe behavior.

Safe Routes to School: AIP Foundation has worked with various government ministries to develop a school safety improvement program that installs crosswalks, speed bumps, traffic lights, etc, at high-risk schools. We bring engineers to project primary schools to survey the environment around the school and prescribe engineering improvements. This ensures that the schoolyard and the surrounding environs reflect the traffic safety education that the children learn in the classroom. The Safe Routes to School program includes the traffic safety education curriculum that AIP Foundation developed, and classroom activities throughout the school year that reinforce the lessons learned through the curriculum.

Public Awareness Education: AIP Foundation’s public awareness education is organized in campaigns that target specific challenges to helmet use and to safe road traffic behavior. Under the sponsorship of Vietnam Helmet Wearing Coalition (VHWC), a group of private corporations, NGOs, multilateral agencies and government partners dedicated to raising awareness of traffic safety, AIP Foundation launched PAC I in early 2007. This first campaign illustrated the debilitating, if not fatal, consequences of traffic accidents. It was reported that the images and information in PAC I pushed the Prime Minister to ignite political action and bring the Vietnam Helmet Law into effect at the end of 2007.

PAC II, launched in 2008, used celebrity ambassadors to change public opinion about wearing helmets. It endorsed quality helmet’s true value: to protect and save lives. The campaign successfully refuted the belief that helmets are harmful to children’s spines. Government ministries proposed a modification of the law, mandating a specific fine for motorbike users with passengers aged 0-14 without helmets.

Walk this Way: AIP Foundation, acting as the Vietnam country representative of Safe Kids Worldwide, implemented Walk this Way, a pedestrian safety program funded by FedEx Express in December 2009. The objectives of this project is to stimulate, encourage and inspire children, teachers, parents and their relatives as well as local community to be aware of good pedestrian safety knowledge and practice. With three integrated components - environment modifications, pedestrian safety education and enforcement - and the involvement of local authorities and FedEx volunteers, this project helps to create a sustainable, safe environment for students, teachers and parents when traveling to and from school on foot.