Future Mentors Programme - Co-creating future cities through dialogue

26 European cities ran the Future Mentors Programme during the spring 2022, as part of the European Year of Youth. 94 young people mentored their respective local leaders.

“Let’s listen to our young people, their hopes, dreams and fears. And let’s all pledge not to fail them. They are our future. Let’s listen to them”.  Jukka Mäkelä, the Mayor of Espoo

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were explored as themes during the programme and with the guidance of Espoo’s Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development, the Future Mentors learned and exchanged on global concerns such as climate change, resource depletion, inequality, poverty, and health. These virtual learning sessions and locally ran workshops prepared the Future Mentors to define the agenda for their local mentoring sessions.   

The Eurocities Annual Conference Espoo 2022 brought the Future Mentors to Finland to meet their peers from other participating cities. The Future Mentors shared their experience of mentoring their local leaders with each other.  The dreams and fears of the youth from the programme were analyzed and presented in form of word clouds to the high-level conference of European city leaders. The data for the clouds was extracted from the topics that the young mentors worked on during the programme on local level. The fear mainly represented the climate crisis, inequality, poverty and unemployment, whereas the dreams majorly spoke of youth participation, climate protection, healthcare and sustainability.  

These word clouds were then used as a unit for analysis by the city decision makers in a workshop facilitated by the city of Espoo during the conference and city leaders were asked to comment virtually on these dreams and fears.

 “The dreams seem small and concrete, fears seem big and general.”  

 “Adults are looking at the world through fears and problems instead of hopes and dreams. That is not the way of building hope for the future”.  

“Fears are linked to themes that the city can make a difference to”  

“If the opinions are not put into action then they are not really being respected. We need to take more chances on the young.” 

During the Eurocities annual conference in Espoo the young mentors had a chance to exchange ideas with their peers on how cities could integrate and include youth in the decision-making process, and to craft concrete recommendations to involve the voice of the young people in developing the cities. 

The Future Mentors came up with six recommendations for youth participation and inclusion on local level and presented them to European city leaders:  

• Compulsory and non-tokenistic youth engagement in decisions which affect them and their futures  
• Create a Eurocities youth department; young people should always be part of the Eurocities network  
• An open line of communication between the city leaders and young facilitators, with at least two meetings per year.  
• Any engagement with young people must be accessible and inclusive. We should put extra care to involve those from disadvantaged backgrounds  
• Enough resources – money and staff – to support youth-centered organizations  
• After any engagement, feedback should be gathered: constant evaluation of youth participation processes.  

These recommendations made by the future mentors were published at the conference and given as recommendations to all European cities. They are also reflected in the Charter on Youth and Democracy (europa.eu) that was adopted by the Committee of the Regions on 1.12.2022. 

The programme created a great impact and highlighted the role of the youth(external link, opens in a new window). The Young Mentors and Mentees were asked to give their feedback through a survey after the programme. The survey had multiple layers which presented both qualitative and quantitative insights. 

On asking how satisfied they were with the programme. With five being the most satisfactory, the programme was marked as an average of 4.2 by the Future mentors and 4.1 by the mentees. Concurrently, it was marked as an average of 4.2 by the Future mentors and 4.1 by the mentees for being a good addition toolkit of youth participation methods. 

The youth expressed their experience and feelings elaborately through their comments and reflected their views on youth inclusion: 

 “By itself, dialogue between city administrations and young people is extremely hard, if not impossible, the programme has proven to be a very needed chance to promote this dialogue.​” 

”[The programme is] making sure that the people who have to live with the future older generations choose, at least have a chance to get their voices heard and ideally implemented into decision-making.” 

 “I feel like whatever I say to the representatives they say they “listen” but they actually do not care because they know the current status quo.”  

These comments give the cities more reasons to include the mentors’ programme as an opportunity for youth inclusion in local decision making to build youth’ sense of belonging in their own cities. 

The city leaders contemplated their journey in the programme, with the young mentors. In the feedback comments, they expressed: 

 “the idea of setting up a dialogue between city representatives and representative of our youth is an effective way to give youngsters a voice in the decision making process.”​ 

 “The dialogue was very positive and respectful. the most difficult part begins now with the mentors’ expectations after this experience. .”​  

 “The issues raised up by our future mentors were handled in the Management Board of the city, and will be further handled in the Management Boards of each city department. Regarding the points raised by the Future Mentors in the Eurocities Espoo AGM, the Management Board will in the future meet regularly with the Youth Council.” 

Future Mentors Programme not only broke the communication silos between the young and city leaders, it also made them realize that both the mentors and the mentees share the same interest, optimism and the common grounds towards shaping the city of their dreams(external link, opens in a new window). After completing the programme, many participating cities created new youth participation instruments. Cities also built new forums and structures for youth participation and dialogue between the youth and the decision makers.

As Jukka Mäkelä, the Mayor of Espoo said, “Let’s listen to our young people, their hopes, dreams and fears. And let’s all pledge not to fail them. They are our future. Let’s listen to them”.

Would you like to run the Future Mentors Programme in your city? 

Future Mentors Manual(external link, opens in a new window) is an overall guide for all the participants of the mentoring programme. 

This information package is for Future Mentors: 
Future Mentors Information Package(external link, opens in a new window)

This information package is for City Coordinators: 
Step By Step Guide for City Coordinators(external link, opens in a new window) 

international@espoo.fi