Join our first street indaba to explore how we can create a more child-friendly city at the street level. It will include reflections of how children and youth currently interact with streets, as places that work well for them, or don’t; showcasing of local initiatives that are helping to build an inclusive and sustainable city with children at the centre; and exchanging of ideas and knowledge for future planning and action. We are excited to be co-hosting the indaba with partners Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation, Gauteng City-Region Observatory, Development Action Group, Childsafe and WesternCape on Wellness (WoW!).
Our MC for the day is Nina Callaghan from the Children's Radio Foundation.
The programme will include:
- Keynote address by Kirti Zala of aProCh community-based initiative in Ahmedebad, India
- Games you might not have played in decades
- Panel discussion with:
- Lesley Muller of the Hanover Park Walking Bus Project / Hope Community Development Project
- Marco Morgan
- Siviwe Mbinda of Happy Feet Youth Project / iThuba Innovation Hub
- Yolande Baker of Childsafe South Africa
- World cafe session with presentations by
- Pedal Power Association & Bicycling Empowerment Network
- Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation
- Childsafe
- Development Action Group
- Emthonjeni Arts Production
- WesternCape on Wellness (WoW!)
- African Centre for Cities
- Gauteng City-Region Observatory
- Twenty Skeight / EduSkeight
- Project Playground
- Heal the Hood
- Walk to a nearby primary school facilitated by Siviwe Mbinda
- Fun quiz & prizes
- Networking drinks
The indaba aims to bring together individuals and organisations who have an interest in children, youth and streets, to share ideas and strengthen relationships for future collaboration. In addition, to create an enabling environment for sharing of knowledge and experience between citizens, government officials and professionals.
Please contact info@openstreets.co.za if you are interested to participate in the world cafe session.
To confirm your attendance, please RSVP here by 5 September
A bit more info about the individuals involved...
Kirti Zala, aProCh
Kirti has led aProCh (a Protagonist in every Child), a community-based initiative to make cities more child friendly since 2011. Kirti holds an M.B.A. from B. K. School of Management, Ahmedabad & MSc in Finance from Strathclyde University, Scotland. She is a passionate and strong advocate of building a better world for children. Kirti has relentlessly worked to touch the lives of 500,000 children & maximized the reach of aProCh to 10 cities and in 3 countries, cementing a sustainable platform for children to engage in childhood, marked with culture, curiosity and creativity. Their initiatives, which enable children to play a role in improving their cities, include City on Cycles, Street Smart, City as My Landscape and the Mov’ing Experience. For this work, Kirti has won awards such as the American Express “Serve2Gether” Consultancy and Financial Times and Citi “Urban Ingenuity Award.”
Marco Morgan
Marco Morgan is a husband, father (of Pabo and Silas), urbanist, activist and government (un)official with his foundations strongly grounded in skateboarding. He is the founder of the National Skate Collective, an advocacy group that has lobbied and petitioned for the rights and legitimacy of the skateboarding community. With more than a decade in public service in various fields from transport to arts and culture, he has used the skateboard as a tool to navigate. Marco is passionate about the urban environments, the cities and towns, but even more so about the people and the cultures that give life to it.
Nina Callaghan, Children’s Radio Foundation
Nina is the Associate Director at Children's Radio Foundation (CRF). She provides oversight for the foundation's operations in South Africa, develops curriculum, administers partnerships as well as the board of trustees. Her favourite job activity is as a youth media trainer and producing great radio. Before this she spent eight years as a television journalist and sub-editor with a focus on health, the environment and children's issues. She is inspired by the resilience of children and the strong personal visions many young South Africans have for themselves. She is currently studying Sustainable Development at Stellenbosch University and is passionate about the ways we future life on the planet.
Siviwe Mbinda
Siviwe Mbinda, a successful entrepreneur (Siviwe Tours and Vamos Travel), founded Happy Feet Youth Project NPO in Langa in 2007, an after school programme that uses dance, music and traditional instruments to create a safe environment to empower children to work hard towards their goals. Through his work as a tourist guide in Langa, Siviwe saw an opportunity to further develop the mentor relationship he had with a small group of children. He paired responsible tourism and gumboots dance together as a catalyst to enable psychosocial and concrete benefits for the children. Siviwe has since co-founded the iThuba Innovation Hub in Langa, to engage the community in future technologies, innovative problem-solving and introduce STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) programs to the young people of the community through educational opportunities and experiences.
Yolande Baker, Childsafe
Yolande Baker is the Executive Director for ChildSafe South Africa. With a background in Child Protection, she has a 20 -year career providing technical support to governments and NGOs on building appropriate and sustainable child protection systems in Southern and East African countries. She is experienced in policy analysis, combined with advocacy and program design to keep children safe. Over the last years she used evidence-based research to prevent harm to plan, design, implementation and scale up national programmes. In addition, Yolande is skilled in coordinating and cooperating across sectors for integrated child protection programming at national and local levels. She studied Social Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand and has a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from University of Manchester, United Kingdom, with a focus on Vulnerable Children. She currently lives in Cape Town with her husband Todd and 2 sons, Jakob and Samuel.
This indaba is part of Open Streets’ TUMI work which focuses on sustainable urban mobility
