Youth Empowerment For Urban Development 2017-2018

Purpose and Justification With the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals and now the New Urban Agenda, 2017 is the seminal year on the road to achieving sustainable cities globally. If urbanization is the engine that propels the world towards prosperity in the 21st century then youth are the engineers. There are more people under the age of 25 today than ever, totaling over three billion or almost half of the total global population; 1.8 billion of that total are between the age of 12 and 24. These youth live, by and large, in cities and towns; the cities of the developing world account for over 90% of the world’s urban growth and youth account for a large percentage of those inhabitants. It is estimated that as many as 60% of all urban dwellers will be under the age of 18 by 2030.