Promoting entity

Municipalidad Metropolitana de Lima (Metropolitan Municipality of Lima))

Period

January 2019 - December 2022

Type of experience:

Municipal Program

Objective of the experience

• To increase citizen’s rights in terms of political participation

Territorial scope

All the territory

Thematic area

• New social movements and associationism
• Local development
• Training/learning
• Legal regulations

Main objective of the innovative experience:

Promote citizen participation of young people in Metropolitan Lima by involving them in the development of their communities in coordination with their local government.

How have you achieved this objective?

Lima Joven Acciona is a relevant initiative for the expansion of the rights of young people in Metropolitan Lima in terms of political and citizen participation. It seeks to involve young people in the decision making process of their local government and to be proactive actors in addressing the problems that afflict them as citizens and that affect their communities.

The actions comprise four action strategies:

(i) Educational and training strategy: the strengthening of young people's capacities is promoted through leadership training schools, strengthening of youth organizations and public speaking.

(ii) Empowerment strategy: these enable young people to formulate and transmit problems and build proposals for action to solve identified problems.

(iii) Social action strategy: young people carry out concrete actions in favor of their communities, through projects designed and executed in coordination with the Metropolitan Municipal Government and strategic allies.

(iv) Strategy for the creation and institutionalization of participatory spaces: designed with and for the youth of the city; this means that the actions carried out will be sustained over time, since they are supported by management documents such as management resolutions and municipal ordinances.

To what extent has this objective been achieved?

Lima Joven Acciona generates spaces that allow the youth of Lima to actively participate. For this reason, four institutional spaces for participation have been created:

(i) The Network of Young Leaders of Metropolitan Lima that promotes the joint work of unorganized youth to strengthen their leadership and act in favor of their community.

(ii) The Metropolitan Network for Youth Organizations is the first virtual platform in Metropolitan Lima designed exclusively for youth organizations. Through it, it is intended to generate contact networks and collaborative work among youth organizations in Lima, as well as with public and private institutions and citizens.

(iii) The District Council of Youth Participation of Lima Cercado is a space of representation of the youth of the district of Lima Cercado. It is made up of thirteen youth organizations of the district, who are called upon to propose and develop projects and solutions for the promotion of youth participation in the district.

(iv) The Metropolitan System for the Promotion and Management of Youth Policies, created by Ordinance No. 462, is a space for coordination between public and private institutions and youth to create public policies in favor of young people in Lima.

Which is the most innovative aspect of the experience?

The Lima Joven Acciona program seeks to involve young people in local decision-making circuits, articulated with the metropolitan government. The logic is not to generate welfare activities for young people, but to build the capacity for action and agency of young people, enabling them to transform the reality in which they live. Within the framework of this new way of working, the following approaches were used:

• Generational approach: The actions that were planned and executed sought to recognize the young person as an agent of social change that is not limited to solving youth problems, but is also interested in their entire community, regardless of whether they are young people.
• Participatory approach: The construction of the activities and proposals developed involved listening to the interests, needs and contributions of young people. Understanding that each one has a different life history and aspirations, this point was important to build the loyalty of the target audience.
• Interdisciplinary approach: It implies teaching from various perspectives. It allowed nurturing the work with new methodologies and ways of learning in the formative processes that were developed within the framework of the program. The use of design thinking or qualitative and interlearning methodologies were used as part of this approach.

To what extent is the procedure transferable?

The program has processes, indicators and specific activities that make it feasible for other municipalities or local governments to replicate it and achieve the same or more beneficial results in terms of working with young people.

Each activity developed in the strategies of the practice has a memory aid, which establishes the guidelines that seek to achieve and also indicators that allow the measurement of the success of the objectives. These evaluation indicators are mostly quantitative. However, other qualitative tools are used to measure the success of the activities developed.

Why do you consider that the experience is feasible?

Lima Joven Acciona is taking place at an important time for young people in Peru and, in particular, for the city of Lima. The so-called demographic bonus is at its peak in the country and Lima concentrates, for the year 2017, 30% (2'201,239) of the young population nationwide. Therefore, working with youth was a pressing task for the new municipal administration that took office in 2019. This high concentration of young people in the city made possible a great call for different profiles of young people willing to work articulately with their local government.

At the beginning of the project design, territorial actions were contemplated, to be carried out during 2019 and the beginning of 2020. However, due to the restrictions applied by the Government to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, the work with youth was turned to the virtual environment. To this end, the training and learning processes were developed virtually, including the projects designed by the youth. Therefore, courses, cultural workshops, awareness-raising activities, among others, were developed virtually, designed and executed by young people, with the support and backing of the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima.

How has the experience been coordinated with other actors and processes?

The Lima Joven Acciona program brought together different actors from civil society, the private sector and the public sector:

Youth organizations: At the beginning of the program, there was no updated local government database on youth organizations. Currently, 300 organizations have been identified. Also, 108 community and social projects planned and developed by youth organizations have been developed.

District governments of Lima: Coordination with the 42 districts of Metropolitan Lima has been fundamental in the development of Lima Joven Acciona. The activation of the Metropolitan System for the Promotion and Management of Youth Policies involved promoting the participation of Lima's district municipalities to generate the first local public youth policy, the Metropolitan Youth Strategy.

Private sector actors: The development of the territorial interventions of the youth that are part of the program have been supported by various private institutions that, through sponsorship and support in materials, allowed them to intervene in public spaces, in their universities and other public and community spaces.

What has the level of co-responsibility been?

With regard to strategic alliances for the development of activities within the framework of the Lima Joven Acciona program, the following actors supported the program:

Communities of Metropolitan Lima and social organizations: We had the support of various communities for the implementation of projects generated by young people in the program. These actions involved the recovery of public spaces, activations and training.

Independent professionals: For the development of the various learning spaces, we had the support and backing of independent professionals who provided their experience and commitment for the development of various sessions and workshops.

Civic associations, non-governmental organizations and universities: The support of civil associations, non-governmental organizations and universities was important when implementing initiatives or generating the various spaces for youth empowerment such as debate tournaments or youth meetings.

What mechanisms for evaluation and accountability were used?

A matrix of general indicators has been created to measure the achievement of the objectives set and to generate quarterly reports:

In addition to the general indicators mentioned above, indicators with more specific information and other qualitative tools for program evaluation and follow-up have been generated:

• Specific indicators: These relate to the number of young people by age, sex, district of residence, educational level attained, occupation and school. This information makes it possible to standardize the different activity databases and evaluate the scope of the activities. In addition, with respect to youth organizations, the indicators refer to thematic lines developed, districts of incidence and the existence of an institutional registry.
• Qualitative tools: Feedback meetings, forms with open-ended questions, the Most Significant Change tool and interviews with young program participants were used.

Summary of the experience

Lima Joven Acciona (Action of Youth in Lima) is an original programme of the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima that seeks to promote political and citizen participation and dialogue with the city's youth, for the benefit of their communities, hand in hand with the local government and various strategic allies.

In 2019, it was identified that the active citizen participation of young people in local development processes involving the Metropolitan Government was practically non-existent. As an example of this, only two youth organisations had been identified with which the municipality's Youth Sub-management had articulated actions only for youth volunteering.

In response to this problem, the Lima Joven Acciona programme was designed and implemented, based on the implementation of four strategies. In this way, the programme helps young people in Lima to develop leadership, organisational and public speaking skills. It also motivates them to be able to express their opinions and proposals for solutions, to plan and develop projects and social interventions for the benefit of their communities, as well as to participate in consultation spaces that allow for the sustainability of their actions.

Lima Joven Acciona has trained 3,000 young people in the city in leadership, organisation and public speaking, identified 300 youth organisations in Metropolitan Lima with which initiatives are being coordinated, involved 2,253 young people in dialogue and debate, established 56 strategic alliances with public and private institutions to achieve objectives, and promoted the design and implementation of 108 community and social projects with organised and unorganised young people.

In addition, with the articulated work of Lima's youth, four institutional spaces for youth citizen participation have been created:

(i) The Lima Young Leaders Network for the creation of initiatives by independent young people.

(ii) The Metropolitan Network for Youth Organisations to make visible and generate work networks between youth organisations in the city.

(iii) The District Council for Youth Participation of Lima Cercado, which represents the various youth organisations in the district of Lima Cercado.

(iv) The Metropolitan System for the Promotion and Management of Youth Policies was reactivated.

Thanks to these platforms, the sustainability of youth interventions in their community is guaranteed, regardless of the metropolitan municipal government in power, as each of these spaces is backed by normative documents.

Summary