Resources

Urban Community Action Planning for teenagers (UCAPT), an urban Northern adaptation of participatory rural appraisal (PRA) and participatory action research (PAR), provides primarily low-income teenagers with neighbourhood problem-solving and planning skills in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. UPCAT integrates indoor and field-based exercises, where young people learn community-based development and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques. This article describes the context of neighbourhood conditions and how UCAPT works. It then draws on two case studies that highlight the roles of teenagers in action. The article concludes by reflecting on some of the challenges that working with teenagers poses.

Local environments are socially and developmentally important domains in children's everyday experiences. Yet so often young people's views and experiences of neighbourhood settings are characterised by conflict with adults, alienation from community life, environmental hazards or neglect and limited opportunities. The ideas presented in this paper are based on the authors' work with children in neighbourhoods in the UK and Australia as part of the æGrowing Up in Cities project. The authors argue that authentic participation involves inclusion - where the system changes to accommodate the participation and values of children, rather than integration where children participate in predefined ways in predefined structures.|The article gives a detailed description of a youth project in suburban Melbourne, including a list of the project's accomplishments and a discussion of the impact of participation on professionals, children and neighbourhoods and the ways in which communities can move towards genuine participation for young people

This paper describes the development of a children's participatory budget council in the city of Barra Mansa (Brazil), to which 18 boys and 18 girls are elected by their peers to ensure that the municipal council addresses their needs and priorities. This council determines how a proportion of the municipal budget (equivalent to around US$ 125,000 a year) is spent on addressing children's priorities, and its child councillors are also involved in other aspects of government. Each year since 1998, more than 6,000 children have taken part in discussions and assemblies to elect their child councillors and discuss their own priorities. The elected children learn how to represent their peers within democratic structures, to prioritize based on available resources, and then to develop projects within the complex and often slow political and bureaucratic process of city governance. This process has extended to children the concept of participatory budgeting that is now widely used in Brazil for increasing citizen involvement in urban governance. It is encouraging similar innovations in other cities in Latin America, as the example becomes better known and as more people visit Barra Mansa.

This brief reviews initiatives focusing on youth and children in city governance, with focus on mainstreaming attention to children's needs into the routine practices of local governments; giving greater attention to children's own perceptions; and drawing on the proven energy and creativity of children and young people to contribute to making their cities better places. It details projects that include: evaluations by children of their own urban neighbourhoods and how they could be improved; these also show how urban neighbourhoods can provide a richer and more supportive environment for children in low- and middle-income nations (with examples from Buenos Aires, Argentina and Bangalore, India) than in high-income nations (with an example from Melbourne, Australia); an initiative in Johannesburg, South Africa, where children evaluated their environment and reported on their needs and priorities to city authorities, and a municipal authority in Brazil (Barra Mansa) that fully involved children in city government and in participatory budgeting; programmes in the Philippines and in Brazil that successfully encouraged local governments to better address the needs and priorities of children; and child-friendly city programmes in many nations and the legal, institutional, budgetary and planning measures that underpinned them. Assessments of these experiences by children were generally positive, although they find that city administrators can be unreliable in implementing their promises and adults often retain control of processes where children had expected more autonomy. These precedents also show how children's participation becomes not only an objective in its own right but also a practical instrument for creating better cities.

How can ordinary citizens - and the organizations and movements with which they engage - make changes in national policies which affect their lives, and the lives of others around them?  Under what conditions does citizen action contribute to more responsive states, pro-poor policies and greater social justice? What is needed to overcome setbacks, and to consolidate smaller victories into 'successful' change? These are the questions taken up by this book which brings together eight studies of successful cases of citizen activism in South Africa, Morocco, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Turkey, India and the Philippines.