Kate Atterbury
Moderator
From local to global: youth participation in implementing SDGs
Fondation Botnar, in partnership with UN Habitat, launched the Youth Shape the Road to 2030 (Youth 2030 Cities) project in 2021.
June 27, 2022 | 16:00 - 17:30
Multifunction Hall Room 15
Healthy Cities For Adolsecents
Switzerland
English
Equitable urban futures
Summary
Youth 2030 Cities is an urban governance initiative that seeks to build the capacity of youth leaders to engage in city-wide assessment and identifying solutions to improve city planning.
The project is focusing on secondary cities of six countries, including Colombia, Ecuador, Senegal, Ghana, India, and Vietnam. The aim is to promote the meaningful participation of young people to contribute towards sustainable urbanization at all levels and align with key global events between 2021 and 2022.
One of the core long-term interests of Youth 2030 Cities is to create a more enabling environment at multiple levels to ensure inclusion of active youth voice in city governance, as well as the adoption of an intersectoral action approach to sustainable urban development, with youth as a core group supporting the creation of new models and approaches. The proposed networking event will explore how adolescents, as key partners in implementing the New Urban Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals, can drive innovative urban development that is smart and sustainable.
With close to one year of implementation underway, Youth 2030 Cities will present evidence and lessons about engaging and empowering adolescents to share their knowledge, ideas and solutions to transform urban environments. One of the emerging areas of interest for UN Habitat and Fondation Botnar is the role of youth as evidence builders.
The event will share Fondation Botnar’s Evidence to Action framework that highlights the importance of youth participation in knowledge generation and discuss the need for capacity building of young people to be contributors in sustainable development in their cities.
The event will present evidence, in the form of DeclarACTIONs, from cities in Latin America, Africa, and Asia on processes and mechanisms that enable meaningful participation of young people at city, regional, and national levels and provide a platform for young people to share their experiences in sustainable urbanization, including driving the implementation of the NUA and local to global achievement of the SDGs.
Objectives
- Raise awareness around adolescent engagement and youth as partners in implementing global initiatives
- Improve knowledge on adolescent challenges in a rapidly urbanizing world
- Identify how to build the capacity of young people to share their experiences in sustainable urbanization, including in driving the implementation of the NUA and achievement of the SDGs
- Determine how to facilitate meaningful youth participation in policy and practice development towards sustainable urbanization in key global milestone events
- Present case studies on promising practices for localising the SDGs, promoting intergenerational dialogue, and integrating youth-led solutions
- Sharing Fondation Botnar’s Evidence to Action framework and the role of youth as evidence builders
- Celebrate youth ideas/solutions and youth-led organization’s initiatives in creating sustainable and equitable cities
- Link local and national youth groups and committees from 6 countries to global events to present their ideas and solutions with decision makers
- Present key outputs from Youth 2030 Cities that were integrated into national DeclarACTIONs, policy dialogues, regional activities and global high-level meetings
- Call for Mayors of cities to make a commitment to the DeclarACTIONs