Living with data

This training will introduce the role of data to tell stories, capture inequalities and express felt experience of place in order to empower communities and create more inclusive urban settlements. The core challenge it seeks to address is that local decision-making often overlooks these lived and subjective experiences. This training seeks to address this gap by empowering marginalized voices, shifting power dynamics, and ensuring communities are actively involved in decisions that affect them. The training aims to provide knowledge on how to build community capacity to use data in a way that fosters engagement with local decision-making processes. We want to move beyond traditional measurements to understand objective and subjective factors that contribute to what people really value, what factors influence their lives, and how satisfied they are. We will introduce the role of participatory data practices to ensure that communities can take ownership of the data, allowing them to express and communicate their lived experiences. The training will provide insights, knowledge and resources to enable engage communities through innovative data methods, such as participatory data gathering and creative storytelling. The training session will be delivered by leading oraganisations working with data and communities globally: Safetipin and the UN Habitat QoL initiative. The training will be a workshop format with interactive and hands on activities, where participants will be encouraged to co-create solutions together. We will use scenarios on the challenge of housing and informal settlements to test ideas and action against the WUF13 theme. The beneficiaries will be civil society organisations, practitioners, city officials, policy makers and city governance as well as academics.