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News & Events Event Reports

Fifth Global Summit: Youth Councils and other City-Led Youth Engagement Initiatives

Publication Date:
21/12/2024
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Cape TownFifth Global Summityouth councilsYouth Engagementyouth-local government engagement

— 14 minutes reading time

Introduction

On 3 – 5 December 2024, the Strong Cities Network held its Fifth Global Summit in Cape Town (South Africa), bringing together more than 140 participants, including 60 mayors and governors, as well as city officials, practitioners and partners from more than 90 cities and 40 countries around the world. The Summit included mayoral conversations, thematic parallel sessions and tabletop exercises – providing city officials from diverse contexts with opportunities to share and learn from city-led innovations and approaches to prevent and respond to hate, extremism and polarisation, and maintain social cohesion amid global crises.

The Summit agenda included a parallel session on how cities are establishing youth councils as a model and mechanism for meaningful engagement with and inclusion of young people in local governance. Youth are often the most susceptible to hate and extremist propaganda, driven by a range of vulnerabilities that are exacerbated by feelings of exclusion, marginalisation and other local grievances. They can also be critical partners in identifying and addressing these challenges. Therefore, local governments must find ways to engage with young people in their cities that not only protect them from harm but also empower them to seek solutions and drive societal change that shapes their city into an open and cohesive place where they and their peers can thrive. To help cities do this, this session explored youth council models that cities in different contexts are employing to engage their young residents to both support and drive positive change in their communities.  

Key Takeaways

City-Led Approach to Youth Empowerment

The session began with a presentation from Cape Town’s Junior City Council (JCC). Councillor Donovan Nelson, who oversees the JCC, gave an overview of the council’s mission, approach and the impacts it has had on both the city of Cape Town and the 50 young people who participate every year. He was joined by four members of the JCC, each of whom shared their experience and how it has impacted them. South Africa is a young country, with a median age of 28, which is why, Nelson explained, the city is so passionate about youth councils. The JCC serves two core functions: to educate young people about local governance and “to teach them how to roll up their sleeves and serve their communities”. Junior City Councillors have gone on to receive awards for their community activities and academic achievements, join local politics and start their own community organisations. It is no wonder that Cape Town is sharing this model for its youth council with other cities around South Africa and across the African continent. 

We want to cultivate a generation of confident, capable and community-focused focused and driven young leaders that are able to inspire change within Cape Town and South Africa

Donovan Nelson, City Councillor, City of Cape Town (South Africa)

Moh’d Maaitah, Mayor of Greater Karak Municipality (Jordan), briefed on Karak’s Youth Council, which was developed in partnership with Strong Cities’ youth pillar, Young Cities. The mayor shared that the Youth Council has been critical in responding to the growing desire among young people to help shape their cities and communities following the Arab Spring in 2011. It has also provided an additional opportunity for the city government to engage with refugee communities, which have grown considerably over the last two decades. Karak’s Youth Council provides young people with an opportunity to influence local policies through direct engagement with the municipal government and to address a wide range of issues facing their communities, including the maintenance of public spaces and the mutual organisation of cultural activities that bring different groups together.

Sarah Taylor, Director of Community Safety, Well-Being, Policy, and Analytics, City of Ottawa (Ontario, Canada), outlined the ways her city engages with young people. Ottawa is a diverse city whose residents include 56 different ethnic groups speaking more than 70 languages. It is also a relatively young city, with around 30% of the population under the age of 35. While Ottawa has long prioritised youth engagement, Sarah explained that the COVID-19 pandemic forced the city to rethink how it works with its young residents in addressing community issues. Young people were critical partners in disseminating health information at a community level and proved that when given the opportunity, young people could be critical partners for local action. “And so, we started to look at that model and think about how we can expand it longer term to better understand what these youth are experiencing within their neighbourhoods and bring that forward.” This led to, among other things, the Neighbourhood Ambassador Programme, which works with young people to identify their needs and offers a range of development activities and opportunities. A key outcome has been to reshape public spaces around the city to better suit young people’s interests.

Joseph Mgwata, Founder of Lonamac, a youth-led community organisation in Mombasa (Kenya), drew from his experience both as a long-time youth activist and, now, a member of civil society who works with the local government of Mombasa to provide young people with training and opportunities to lead. Joseph emphasised that building social capital with young people is key for productive youth engagement, and this takes consistent communication. For example, the Governor of Mombasa meets with young people in the city on a quarterly basis to discuss city administration and planning and listen to their concerns and needs. In addition to these formal meetings, the city also organises football tournaments and music events to bring young people together. Joseph warned that when you do not listen to young people, they will make their needs known in other ways through protests and demonstrations.

Youth Councils and Youth Engagement Programmes Should Be Mutually Beneficial

Speakers reinforced how young people are critical partners in preventing hate (and other threats to social cohesion) because of the insights and abilities they bring. Their inclusion can provide immediate and long-term benefits for the city, both by enhancing its ability to respond to challenges and by addressing the barriers and grievances that make young people vulnerable to extremism and exclude a key demographic from becoming full members of society. To ensure meaningful participation, participants emphasised how youth engagement programmes, including youth councils, should also offer clear benefits to their young participants that will help them advance themselves in the short term and pursue meaningful futures. 

Karak Youth Council members receive a range of support to help prepare them for success, including training in business leadership, governance and project management. Mayor Maaitah explained: “We support them technically, we support them socially, and we support them financially … to ensure they are on the right track to start their own careers.”

In Cape Town, JCC participants have opportunities to build their knowledge, skills and networks and gain invaluable experience with governance and community work. Junior City Councillor Deyantè Laros explained: “What I love about the JCC is that it doesn’t just have external positive impacts. It also impacts individuals infinitely … I’ve come out of [the experience] a lot more confident … and I learned how to collaborate and network, which are very important skills in the real world.”

Tangible Opportunities for Young Participants to Shape Their Communities

Meaningful youth engagement gives young people the chance to effect real change in their communities through policymaking and/or community projects. The speakers shared several examples in which young people had the opportunity to go beyond merely acting as implementors or messengers and instead helped set the agenda, define the approach and address the issues that mattered most to them.

Inclusive and Representative

In Cape Town, inclusion is key for the JCC. 50 young people are selected every year from 50 different neighbourhoods around the city. Councillor Nelson noted that “when we select these young people, we don’t look at race, we don’t look at gender, we don’t look at their mobility, physical mobility. We don’t even look at the school reports, we want to break every barrier for entry when they apply to the JCC.” Takunda Muchuweni, a Junior City Councilor, explained that, working with young people with disabilities is bringing more awareness to the challenges people face and changing the narrative about disability in the city.

Inclusivity is not just about having someone represented or having someone there, but it’s about providing the same opportunities and experience to everyone else.

Takunda Muchuweni, Junior City Councilor, Cape Town (South Africa)

In Karak, the youth council maintains equal representation for men and women and includes representatives from all the communities residing in the city, including refugee communities, to ensure all groups have a voice in local politics. Similarly, Ottawa’s Neighbourhood Ambassador Programme is organised by neighbourhood to ensure there is equal representation across the entire city and that each area has a voice and an equal opportunity to address its needs.

Invest in Young People

Sustainable youth engagement requires consistent funding. Joseph Mgwata called on all cities to “allocate at least 1% of their annual budgets to youth engagement activities to ensure sustained, meaningful participation.” The structure of that funding matters, as well as the amount. In Cape Town, Councillor Donovan explained the sustainability of the Junior City Council lies in part in its internal structure. The JCC is situated within the Speaker Office, which is allocated an annual budget. The JCC’s staffing and funding then come from within that office, a set-up they have found to be more sustainable and better able to weather changes in the city’s administration.

When an old person plants a tree, he’s not planting that tree for himself. He won’t be there when the tree matures. But the people who are behind that old person in terms of age will enjoy the fruits, will enjoy the shade, will enjoy the timber, will enjoy the oxygen that comes from that tree. If cities take that model towards young people, it’s going to change the conversation. It’s going to change the perspective. We will have more time and more energy for preventive measures, rather than curative.

Joseph Mgwata, Founder of Lonamac, Mombasa (Kenya)

It is also important to invest time in young people’s development. Joseph explained that one of the greatest benefits he took from the Young Cities programme was the chance to be mentored by city officials, and he understands this mentorship as the key to securing not only a young person’s future but also the future of the city.

Public Spaces That Meet Youth Needs

In Ottawa (Ontario, Canada), the local government has been working with young people to create public spaces that better meet their needs. In some cases, it was making existing spaces more user-friendly, like adding lights in public parks and sports complexes so young people play longer. In others, it meant repurposing spaces so more of the community feel welcome. For example, Sarah Taylor explained that since Canadian winters are not very hospitable for playing outside, young refugees with no experience with winter sports had nowhere to play during the winter. “All they wanted to do was play soccer, but we didn’t have a space for that. We were able to talk to local schools and community centres and open the gymnasium for soccer during the day.” It is these small adjustments, Sarah explained, that make public spaces more useful and create a more hospitable environment for all young people in the city. Critically, the only way to make these changes is to listen to young people and work with them so spaces are appropriate and can contribute to a shared sense of community.

In 2021, Canada’s Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency announced the Canada Community Revitalization Fund, a CAD 500 million fund to support communities in building and revitalising public spaces and infrastructure. Ottawa developed its funding application with young people in the city and received more than CAD 1 million, which they used to make improvements in 27 parts of the city, supported by members of the Neighbourhood Ambassadors programme and other young people living in the target neighbourhoods.

Next Steps

Through its Regional Hubs and Young Cities programme, Strong Cities will continue to look for opportunities to work with cities to build the capacity of young leaders to develop strategic and sustainable responses to community social challenges and encourage local leaders to engage young people meaningfully, including through the design and operationalisation of inclusive youth councils, and develop productive partnerships for addressing youth needs.

Further Resources

See our new policy brief on this topic:

Other recent Strong Cities policy briefs and resources:

Additional reading:

Donors & Partners

The Fifth Global Summit was made possible with generous support from the European Union, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Public Safety Canada, the US Department of State and the City of Cape Town. 

The views expressed in this session report do not necessarily reflect those of all Strong Cities Network members, the Management Unit or Summit sponsors and partners. 

Contact Information 

For more information about the Fifth Global Summit or the Strong Cities Network, please contact [email protected].

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