What ‘pathfinding cities’ can teach us about preparing to end violence

This article is written by Jake Broadhurst, who leads innovation & uptake at the End Violence Lab.

In 2030, at the end of the lifespan of the current Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is projected that 60% of the world’s citizens will live in cities. Africa will need 1,000 new cities the size of my hometown Edinburgh in the next 10 years to accommodate projected population growth and the shift from rural to urban.

This reality means that an increasing majority of families and children are growing up in urban and peri-urban communities where complex social and infrastructure challenges shape nearly all aspects of their lives. These children are part of the growing global cohort, currently estimated at 1 billion, who experience some form of violence every day.

In 2016, the UN Secretary-General launched the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children — known as End Violence — catalysing global resources. An important part of this is End Violence’s work with a growing number of pathfinding countries to develop national violence prevention plans and accelerate implementation.

Recognising the potential to also harness civic leadership in rapidly changing cities, End Violence is initiating a pilot to explore the concept of Pathfinding Cities. Pathfinding Cities use the INSPIRE Seven strategies for Ending Violence Against Children to understand the drivers of violence and to build integrated responses that improve the lives of children and young people.

Thanks to peer-to-peer learning, supported by the Global Partnership, three other Pathfinding Countries in Cambodia, Colombia and Uganda are exploring similar opportunities to work at the city level with their stakeholders.

Rapid learning in 2019 in a proof of concept Pathfinding City — Valenzuela in the Philippines — demonstrates that building citywide stakeholder capacity, including the capacity of young people, is critical to sustaining effective violence prevention for decades to come. Pathfinding Cities must be locally driven, have real-time feedback loops and be responsive to dynamic urban environments.

As well as working with individual cities we have recently begun bringing together civic leaders, service leaders and scholars from each of the pilot Pathfinding Cities. Each of their situations is unique with specific challenges and contexts. A standout observation by members of this group is the importance of the social and interpersonal dimensions of firstly, leading complex interventions at a city level; and secondly, of the power of the connections between cities.

So far, our approach to Pathfinding has been up-close and personal. An expert, multidisciplinary external team works closely with national or city level teams in adaptive cycles of learning, implementation and evaluation in each Pathfinding city or country.

Early evidence suggests that this intensive approach works and is a proportionate investment in the lives of children and families. Yet this approach will also, in an important way, fail.

One of our big questions is scaling. Ending violence against children by 2030 in all cities is essential to delivering Sustainable Development Goal 11, to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. In 2030 there will 4.9 billion people living in urban areas and while growth in large cities is part of the picture, over half of this urban population will live in a vast number of cities and other settlements of 500,000 or less.

We cannot wait until we have a perfect prototype Pathfinding City. Scaling has to be baked in from the start, otherwise we risk creating approaches that only function with intensive external support and resources.

Right now we are not close to having a model for scaling. But we have identified key ingredients needed to bring massive multi-city scaling to ending violence:

1) IT’S ALL ABOUT PEOPLE AND RELATIONSHIPS

By being explicit about the extraordinary human dimensions that make complex interventions stick we can catalyse existing and new communities of practice that motivate, celebrate, re-energise, level up, learn and invent together.

These can deliver at a national, regional and global level and be configured to fit with regulatory, education, and justice systems; build hyper-local affinity groups, and leverage social and cultural connections to share experience and offer companionship in through good and bad.

2) A COMPELLING AND ADAPTABLE CASE FOR INVESTMENT

Civic leaders face resource allocation trade-offs. Becoming a Pathfinding City has not only to be the right thing to do; it has to be clearly understood – and politically sellable – as an investment in children now and their futures as adults.

3) ADAPTABLE TOOLKITS, NOT TEMPLATES

Ending violence has to be locally led and delivered — not dependant on external support or drivers. The support that external actors provide should be adaptable, build on local context. Children’s part in decision making is an essential element of this local leadership.

4) LEARNING, DATA AND EVIDENCE

Cities need to understand and share progress. The Global EVAC Knowledge Network is coordinating partners to deliver a range of products to enable them to do so. These products are 1. a methods menu offering a selection of rigorous approaches for baselines and surveillance; 2. an evidence and gap map on violence prevention strategies for future research planning; and 3. a resource pack on child participation in VAC research.

Our work with Pathfinders is ongoing. End Violence Lab hosted a Pathfinding Delegation in Scotland in September 2019 to participate in a Learning Journey. The vision of this learning journey was based on the belief that bringing people together, who are working on the same problem in different parts of the world, increases learning and galvanises action.

Now our ambition for the year ahead is to mobilise resources to continue learning with this group of individuals from Pathfinding Countries and Pathfinding Cities in order to strengthen and accelerate the work of ending violence against children in pilot cities and inform massive multi-city implementation strategies for ending violence against children.

While pilot Pathfinding Cities show early promise and we are excited about the possibility of radical scaling, we are concerned whether it is possible to scale the support for people and relationships essential to leading complex interventions at a city level.

This article draws on ideas and material created by independent consultants Debra Williams Gaulandi and Wendy Ball; Dr Debi Fry, University of Edinburgh; and Catherine Maternowska, Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children.

End Violence Lab is a collaboration between Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children and University of Edinburgh working together with universities around the world and those involved in Pathfinding City and Country initiatives.

(Picture credit: Unsplash)