Local Environmental Initiatives Oriented to Children and Youth: A Review of UN-Habitat Best Practices

This 12-page paper explores the strategy of engaging children and young people as full participants in community-based environmental action and advocacy work around the world. It presents the results of a study of the objectives and methods of a selection of 101 child- and youth-oriented environmental initiatives with the aim of highlighting how local communities and municipalities are working to create physical environments that support the rights and priorities of children.

The authors use what they call "a child-friendly city framework" in an examination of 101 "good," "best" and "award winning" practices identified by UN-Habitat as having a demonstrable, tangible impact on the physical environment for children and youth, including attention to: water and sanitation, housing and neighbourhood conditions, the physical conditions within institutions for children, and conditions that promote play and recreation, or that ensure mobility and access for disabled youth. These successful practices are also characterised as emerging from the result of effective partnerships, and as being socially, culturally, economically, and environmentally sustainable.

Stressing that there are a variety of communication-centred approaches to improving the living environment for children and youth, the authors identify some similar trends and patterns. Successful practices typically:

• adhere to multiple child-friendly principles, with activities in one category building on and reinforcing activities in other categories;
• involve children directly in environmental improvement activities;
• are part of more broad-based approaches that include other population groups, policy domains, and programme areas;
• rely on community-based approaches;
• include a variety of stakeholders, rather than a single organisation or government agency; and
• scale up to other parts of the city, to other cities, or even other countries.

The authors then provide profiles of several community-based practices that are oriented to the needs of children and youth, and worthy of further study:

1. Rosario: The New Citizenship Landscape (Argentina) - The goals of The City of Children project are to enable children and youth to participate in the design of public spaces, to develop strategies by which to reclaim public spaces for leisure and recreation, and to create campaigns that transform the environment based on a concept of social ecology. Young people are elected to the Children Advisory Councils (CAC) by their peers in their home district. The project has resulted in the creation of several child-led community campaigns and events, and has succeeded in built both youth participation and community pride in Rosario.
2. Mathare Youth Self-Help Slum and Environmental Cleanup Project (MYSA - Kenya) - Soon after coordinating the first sports leagues in the Mathare Valley and neighbouring slums, youth leaders pioneered a link between sports and the environment, working under the motto "healthy athletes need a healthy environment." They created an initiative that awarded league points for each garbage cleanup project completed by a team, and then, in 1988, organised MYSA as an official non-governmental organisation (NGO) run by youth for youth. MYSA coordinates weekly cleanup projects and engages in community service, leadership, and peer mentorship programmes.
3. Children and Young People's Participatory Budget Council (Barra Mansa, Brazil) - Youth aged 16 and older participate in the planning of the city budget; those aged 9-16 take part in their own, parallel budget-planning process. The children and youth have shown wide-ranging concerns for their communities by allocating funds for improved sanitation, education, healthcare, transportation, recreational facilities, and safety measures.
4. Community Led Environment Action Network (CLEAN - Delhi, India) - Children act as the prime agents of change by using water- and air-quality monitoring field kits, participating the setting up of recycling and composting stations, planting native trees and shrubs, launching campaigns against littering and for the use of polluting polythene bags, and conducting public events to raise popular awareness of a variety of environmental issues. "The impact of the programme at the policy level was profound," in part by generating baseline and seasonal environment data to inform policy initiatives.
5. Mother Centre International Network/AG International (Stuttgart, Germany) - Neighbourhood-based, cooperatively owned mother centres provide low-cost child care and services for women and children while becoming hubs of social activity and democratising access to local opportunities. The Network now includes more than 700 centres in Europe, Russia, Africa, and North America. A survey by the German Youth Institute found that 47% of respondents saw improvements to the local infrastructure as a result of mother centre participant activism, and 46% of the mother centres are represented on municipal councils on urban planning and development.

Reflecting on these and other examples of effective participation strategies, the authors note that there are many questions yet to be answered, such as: What lessons have the adults and youth involved learned, and what would they suggest others add or avoid to make similar projects successful? "Monitoring and evaluation appear to be rare, as is the use of child-impact assessments....More focused follow-up research could shed light on whether and how practices adapt to changing conditions over time and which practices lead to long-term sustainable child friendly cities."