Urban Thinkers Campus in Mumbai, with Safecity , Developmatrix and The Urban Vision

 Safecity, Developmatrix and The Urban Vision are co-hosting a 2 day programme -Creating Resilient and Inclusive Cities on behalf of The Swedish Institute and The UN Habitat as part of the Urban Thinkers Campus on 21-22 nd June at ISDI ACE, Mumbai. 

This programme is being conducted in partnership with the U.S. Consulate General, Mumbai, Indian School of Design and Innovation (ISDI), Tata Capital and BMW Foundation.

The Urban Thinkers Campus (UTC) model is an initiative of UN-Habitat’s World Urban Campaign, conceived as an open space for critical exchange between all stakeholders and partners aims to promote sustainable urbanization. Only 27 such UTCs have been approved for 2018 from around the world and we are honoured to be one of them.

Creating Resilient and Inclusive Cities, is a platform to bring together diverse voices to deliberate on existing barriers to gender equality and women empowerment and finding localised, community driven solutions for addressing the same. This is envisaged as a yearly program comprising of the following:

a) Stakeholder dialogue sessions with interactive innovation labs that generate action plans
b) Social incubator to engage youth to work on hyper local, community based solutions through a 5-month programme.

The platform includes the following activities:

a)21 June - a Stakeholder dialogue session for 150 people comprising from Government, Corporate, NGOs and Citizens (including youth). We will specifically be talking about gender in regards to Safety, Mobility, Urban environmental challenges and involvement in the planning/governance process.
b)22 June - Kick off for the Youth Design Innovation challenge, a 5 month social incubator programme commencing with an introductory session on how to define a problem and design solutions from a user's perspective. This will be followed by a formal application to apply for the challenge through submission of ideas to create Women Friendly cities toward the youth studying in the colleges of the Mumbai Metropolitan area. 10 teams of diverse gender will be selected for mentoring through experiential sessions, expert mentoring and capacity building support. The final working prototypes will be pitched to a jury in December and top 3 solutions recognised.
c) A white paper will be published for future reference on the UN Habitat's website as well as can be used to initiate dialogue with relevant stakeholders from Government or Corporate.

We will have influencers like Faye D’Souza and Meghna Pant moderating our panel discussions; Harish Iyer will be leading an Innovation Lab and Sapna Moti Bhavnani will be doing a spoken word piece.

Key Highlights:-
 The UTC will reach approximately 300 people
 Mentorship on design thinking and urban planning (to 100 + the 10 teams)
 Participation by youth on contributing to making our city resilient and inclusive
 Hyper local solutions for the city of Mumbai
 UNDP India will be mentoring potential projects ideated by female led teams and help pitch them to Start Mission Launch (Government of Maharashtra).
 BMW Foundation will be sponsoring the youth retreat in August and September.
 The U.S. Consulate General, Mumbai is our knowledge partner and the final pitch session will be on 14 December at the Dosti House, U.S. Consulate Mumbai.

About the Co-Hosts:-
Safecity is a platform that crowdsources personal stories of sexual harassment and abuse in public spaces. The idea is to make this data useful for individuals, local communities and local administration to identify factors that causes behavior that leads to violence and work on strategies for solutions.

Connect with Safecity on social media: : Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Developmatrix is a women-led social enterprise working in the area of sustainability - environment and CSR. Some of its partners are Adani Port & SEZ, Larsen & Toubro Infotech, Safecity.

Connect with Developmatrix on social media: Facebook and Twitter.

The Urban Vision has been initiated with the core belief that cities offer a remarkable way to create a socially inclusive, environmentally sustainable and economically vibrant society. It profiles best practices and the finest thinking in the key components of city building –Urban Design, Architecture, infrastructure planning, policy strategies et cetera.

Connect with The Urban Vision on social media: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

For more information on the  Urban Thinkers Campus – Facebook /Twitter.