Youth initiatives for Public Spaces

ongoing

In the Western Balkans, informal settlements have been a spatial manifestation of a painful transition from a socialist to a capitalist system, and an absence of respect for legal controls arising in response to decades of repressive socialist rule. Youth in informal settlements are highly vulnerable to poverty, lacking appropriate education and less opportunity for employment. Yet young residents in these communities are also one of the least represented populations in planning and community development processes. Youth are often left out of the advocacy and planning process yet represent an important constituency in informal settlements for several reasons. Youth living in these areas are lacking the capacities to address to the public institutions their needs and the motivation to change. Still, youth are not well connected with each other and in most cases unable to mobilize to bring a change to their neighbourhood/environment. Referring the above challenges, the project addresses the need to develop digital tools (urban gamifications) and empower/engage the new young generation (with fewer opportunities) through new urban capacity development programs as instruments which can tackle the gaps addressed and support the transition of informal settlements in the Western Balkan (Green Agenda for the Western Balkan). The main objectives of the proposal are -empowering young professionals from participating organizations with appropriate tools and methods to influence the planning process with the final purpose of upgrading informal settlements, -to enable local youth to effectively contribute to scaling up informal settlements upgrading in their areas and to disseminating the results and the methodology of the project with the purpose to make a wider impact to the society through online events, virtual communication. The project aims to gather together 6 organizations from the EU countries and Western Balkan countries with a single aim to transform the informal settlements through youth for youth. It will have a duration of 24 months and the main activities are researching, training and education of youth workers through mobility and engaging youth through local activities etc. The expected results of the project are: 1 Report on status of informal settlements, capacities of 20 youth workers are raised through the mobility activities, 1 digital training toolkit is developed and is delivered to youth, at least 20 youth have been engaged and empowered in urban development tools through the toolkit. At least 1000 people are reached by the dissemination event.