Youth Friendly Cambridge

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✊🏽Youth Friendly Cambridge (YFC) is organizing a culture of project-based citybuilding in Cambridge. We believe our youth have the wisdom to co-create the places and programs they need to flourish🚀.

✊🏽YFC is partnering with Cambridge’s young people, our leadership, and our vibrant ecosystem of youth-serving organizations to pursue UNICEF’s Child Friendly City designation. This will give Cambridge the organizational framework, the data analysis tools, and the structured youth engagement opportunities for youth voice to shape supportive places, programs and policies in our community.

We believe starting with youth is the pathway to building a more just, innovative and resilient city for all.

“Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people.” Enrique Peñalosa, Mayor of Bogatá,

Why

Declining teen mental health 🪫,  rising summer temperatures☀️, the  loneliness epidemic, and predictably inequitable outcomes are wicked problems impacting our youth. As adults it is difficult to fathom how different adolescence is today than it was even fifteen years ago. Our young people have no reference, but they know things need to change. ✊🏽Youth Friendly Cambridge (YFC) is igniting⚡️ a citywide culture of youth-directed changemaking in collaboration with our school, city, and community partners.

“Teens nowadays are faced with feeling unwanted, unwelcomed, and/or excluded. Adults are always the ones controlling the money where it goes, and how it’s used to solve our problems. At the end of the day, nobody knows teens better than teens.” Samadhi, CRLS ‘24, SHADE cofounder

City-budgets and policies dramatically impact the life and culture of our young people. Youth hangout in city parks, enjoy city programs, and go to city schools. But have the priorities and policies that guide these places kept pace with the technological, behavioral, and climate realities of adolescence?

As a city made up of adult decision-makers, there’s no clear and structured way to solicit youth opinion on decisions that impact them. ✊🏽Youth Friendly Cambridge is organizing an effort to address this problem with:

1. A city and community-wide commitment to uphold the rights of, and solicit input from, its youth
2. A youth data dashboard to understand youth today, guide decisions, and measure progress towards future goals
3. Youth opportunities and tools to include their opinions and ideas in current city discussions

We believe our young people have the passion, ideas, and interest to create intergenerational collaborations to address their own public health needs.  Based on our own experience working alongside young people, ✊🏽Youth Friendly Cambridge believes youth insight will be transformative. As Samadhi reminds us, “ nobody knows teens better than teens.”

How

Cambridge is incredibly committed to its young people.  ✊🏽Youth Friendly Cambridge hopes to concretize this commitment with the help of an international framework.

UNICEF’s Child Friendly City initiative provides this framework.  UNICEF has recognized over 3,000 cities world-wide as Child Friendly Cities.  But in the U.S., only Houston and Minneapolis have earned this certification to date. (Four more U.S. cities are in the pilot process: Alton, Illinois; Boulder, Colorado; Decatur, Georgia; and Prince George's County, Maryland.)

✊🏽YFC is organizing a coalition to help Cambridge become a UNICEF-certified Child Friendly City. In so doing, we can learn from a community of peer cities around the world how to put our commitment to youth rights into practice.

According to UNICEF (the children-facing arm of the United Nations), a Child Friendly City demonstrably solicits opinions from, and upholds the rights of, citizens 18 years and younger. These rights were ratified by the United Nations during 1989’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

Key child rights pertaining to Child Friendly Cities include:

• Non-discrimination (Article 2) The rights of all children are respected, without discrimination of any kind irrespective of the child’s or his or her parent’s or legal guardian’s race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic, or social origin, property, disability, birth, or other status.
• Best interests of the child (Article 3) The best interests of children are a primary consideration in decisions that may affect them with State Parties assuring the care and protection necessary for their well-being.
• The inherent right to life, survival and development (Article 6) Children have the right to life, with States Parties committed to ensuring the maximum extent possible, their right to survival and healthy development. And most importantly for Cambridge:
• Respect for the views of the child (Article 12) Children have the right to voice their opinions and have these be taken into account in decisions that affect them.

UNICEF’s Child Friendly City Initiative translates the Convention’s rights 👆🏽into a tangible set of city obligations that ensure our youth are heard, respected, and counted as independent individuals in an ongoing fashion.

Where

How may youth help us secure the designation themselves? ✊🏽Youth Friendly Cambridge comes alive as a complement to Massachusetts’ recently revised 8th grade civics curriculum.

The 2018 History and Social Science Frameworks  along with Chapter 296, An Act to promote and enhance civic engagement, renewed the civic mission of a history and social science education in Massachusetts: to prepare all students to be thoughtful and active citizens. Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE)

In our 8th grade Social Studies classrooms across the city we can “walk the talk” of our civics curriculum by piloting periodic in-class moments where 8th grade voices can guide current city discussions with new perspectives, concerns, and ideas.

What

✊🏽Youth Friendly Cambridge is an effort to build something – a new, youth-respected program for adult collaboration and co-creation process. This goal requires YFC to create a culture of transparency and action. We commit to a “show don’t tell” process,  demonstrating our commitment with real-world collaborations and functional prototypes. Youth Friendly Cambridge itself must be a youth co-creation. Everything we do will evolve with continual input of youth, city, and community partners.

Collective Commitments 📜

• Commitment to Youth Rights 📜

We must organize a unifying, community-wide commitment to systemically integrate the voice of, and uphold the rights of, our children and youth. We may draw on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and other Child Friendly City documents.

• Exploration of a Child Friendly City Accreditation🎓

We must build a local coalition of stakeholders (corporations, community members, local officials, institutions, and more) interested in supporting Cambridge’s designation as a Child Friendly City.

Youth Data Dashboard 🎛️ Pilot

NOTE: Any use of data must put privacy and security above all else. For youth data access in particular, Youth Friendly Cambridge will enter into the necessary legal agreements and follow the operational best practices to ensure safety.

Cambridge has many data repositories to paint a picture of how Cambridge meets the needs of its youth. Bringing this data together will allow us to capture the existing condition, set goals, and measure our progress.

Consolidating this varied information through a location-based📍lens 🔎 provide can surface some basic facts to drive current youth-related policy and planning discussions:

• What is a Youth Friendly Central Square? (Central Square City Lots Study)

How many young people live in Central Square now, and where? How many young people will grow up in Central in the next 20 years? How far are the resources (green space, libraries, youth centers) that serve them?

• What is a Youth Friendly Alewife? (Alewife District Plan) How many young people live in Alewife now, and where? How many young people will grow up in Alewife in the next 20 years? How far are the resources (green space, libraries, youth centers) that serve them?
• What is a Youth Friendly approach to climate preparedness?  (Resilient Cambridge Master Plan)

Climate change will increasingly impact the future, what do our young people think about the suggestions outlined in this report? What ideas do they have that are not included?

Guided by curriculum coordinators and teaching teams, we may create 3-4 8th grade, Youth Voice units. These ~20 minute micro units would follow a consistent template, led by the teacher or ✊🏽Youth Friendly Cambridge team member. Created for the teachers, these micro units, likely Google Slides, would introduce 1 - 2 vetted, non-partisan current issues. Varying points of view on the issue would be provided as well as follow up conversation starters. Finally a link to a google form will be provided where individual youth may let their voice count.

Youth Voice Program 📣 Pilot

Guided by curriculum coordinators and teaching teams, we hope to create a handful of scaffolded 8th grade curriculum units around current city issues that impact youth.

• Created by teachers, curriculum coordinators, and ✊🏽YFC team
• Flexibility for modification and customization by 8th grade students
• Monthly, 20-25 minute micro units with Google Slides
• Familiar template, led by the teacher or ✊🏽YFC team
1. One vetted, non-partisan current issue would be introduced
2. Varying points of view on the issue will be provided
3. Conversation starters for small group discussions
4. Google form where individual youth let their voice count

Further Resources

…more to come

Connect

Jeff Goldenson | jeff@buildingways.com | 617.909.2917