A Global Meeting for the Well-being of Young People in Cities
By: Natalia Borrero, Planning and Learning Leader
At the end of last month, we participated in the OurCity Initiative meeting, a community of cities led by the Botnar Foundation, in which we are a partner for the implementation of NuestraBarranquilla, in conjunction with Diseño Público. This city initiative aims to support cities in transforming into youth-centered cities through the use of artificial intelligence and technology; foster an enabling environment for youth participation; connect with diverse stakeholders under a long-term transformation strategy; and consider their relational well-being—that is, their social and cultural well-being—built through intercultural dialogue. This well-being is linked to their environment, encompassing subjective, material, and relational aspects.
TangaYetu, Our Tanga - Tanga is a port city in the north of the country, with approximately 273,000 inhabitants. It is a quiet and safe city, according to the City Director. It is located on the shores of the Indian Ocean, and its port is the city center. It has set its sights on becoming the third most important city in the country, after its capital Dodoma and Daar es Salaam, the business capital.
The hosts of this first inspirational and learning event were the city of Tanga in Tanzania, the first community chosen to implement OurCity. We participated from NuestraBarranquilla and shared experiences with the teams leading the implementations in NuestraManta in Ecuador, OurCluj in Romania, and OurKoforidia in Ghana. It was a setting full of diverse languages, contexts, and solutions that generated valuable learning and reflection for our team.
TangaYetu, Our Tanga, was the first city in this global community, which has been operating for three years and has been working to understand local needs from the perspectives of young people, with significant involvement from public actors at the local and national levels, as well as other civil society actors. We had the opportunity to meet with representatives from all these groups, who generously shared the progress of their processes and the initiatives underway to create enabling conditions for the well-being of the city's youth in the areas of health, skills development, education, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
What did we take away from this experience?
Fundamental principle: total adaptation to the context
“Appropriate for the context” is one of OurCity’s principles, which encourages the development of evidence and solutions that are mindful of cities’ starting points and their visions and paths to success, defined by and for their inhabitants—in this case, young people. To achieve this, it is crucial to continue investing in the generation, analysis, and collective use of data to inform decision-making processes, as well as the ongoing involvement and listening to the voices of local stakeholders , who must have a say in all decisions that affect them.
Systemic thinking and change
Thinking at a city level involves considering complexities due to the connections and different dimensions in which the barriers that perpetuate social problems manifest themselves. It is necessary to recognize that the social challenges we face do not disappear; they simply transform into a new status quo. This invites us to reflect on all the interventions in which we participate, to ask ourselves what the next step is, and to consider perspectives on the sustainability of progress and the resilience of cities and their populations through the capacities that are developed to continue addressing emerging challenges.
Build an ecosystem instead of an ego-system
During the meeting, the importance of building an ecosystem instead of an ego-system was highlighted, where collaboration and trust are fundamental for the involvement of public actors and youth in decision-making.
TangaYetu is a great example of collaboration between actors at different levels of national and local government, cooperation agencies, social entrepreneurs, and young people. Some of them also mentioned that they are not there for the resources, but rather united by a vision of change for the city, which aspires to become the third most important city in their country.
Identifying a common goal and trusting those participating in these processes, starting from the best intentions to achieve a collective benefit, is part of what Tanga Yetu has managed to articulate: a shared, co-constructed and legitimate vision that mobilizes the capabilities of multiple actors.
Evidence generation
A very interesting conversation arose from the Evidence 2 Action Framework , a meta-learning framework for OurCity designed by Melbourne University. While its implementation shows there is still much to be done, the objective is clear: we need more evidence of what works, and also what doesn't, to transform cities into enabling environments for youth development.
We will continue to delve deeper into how "we learn to learn," how we use different methods to listen to stories, recognize other voices as expert sources for generating evidence, and draw on the experience of social intervention implementers to continue doing our work better.
We conclude this experience by expressing our gratitude to our country and strengthening our desire to contribute even more. We acknowledge the challenges we face as a nation, but we also celebrate the opportunities it has afforded us. We commit to embracing an active role in building a more equitable and transformative society, where opportunities are available to everyone.