The Youth Gamechangers Initiative (YGI) aimed to engage youth in designing public spaces in Bargny, Senegal. Often, youth are excluded from planning and decision-making about public spaces that affect their health, safety, and well-being. The YGI—a partnership of UN-Habitat, the Botnar Foundation, and the World Health Organization—was designed to address this gap by strengthening youth participation in planning public spaces. The Initiative began by identifying those who needed to be engaged; including youth, municipal authorities, planners, and others who could contribute. Situational analyses were conducted to determine local conditions, governance structures, and barriers to participation. Co-design workshops brought youth and local authorities together, including through use of digital tools like Minecraft that enabled participants to visualize and communicate their ideas for public spaces. The Initiative worked to make participation more rewarding by assuring that youth had direct roles in designing public spaces and contributing to policy discussions. YGI made participation accessible through user-friendly digital tools and flexible formats, allowing youth with different skills and backgrounds to contribute. Capacity-building activities, like training in participatory planning and digital design, helped improve people’s abilities to be involved. This initiative strengthened conditions for full and effective youth engagement in planning for environments that affect community health and well-being
SOURCE:
Fondation Botnar and UN-Habitat launch the Young Gamechangers Initiative
For Further Information:
- Fondation Botnar: Young Gamechangers Initiative
- Three cities selected to pilot the Young Gamechangers Initiative
- YGI Participatory Budgeting
- Young Gamechangers: Amplifying Youth Voices for Healthier Public Spaces [special issue of Journal of Public Spaces