How IIED helps young housing activists be heard
IIED is supporting urban youth movements from the global South to be heard on housing and urban governance – including a Lagos team whose short film won an award in Paris and was screened at a side event at the Cannes Film Festival.
Young activists at the World Urban Forum (Photo: Samuel Okechukwu, Media4Change)
The film's makers are part of a group of young activists from nine countries brought together by IIED to share strategies and skills for being heard on issues of housing and urban governance.
Young people are routinely excluded from decisions about urban spaces, especially in informal settlements of the global South. Yet young people are a large share of the population: 70% of sub-Saharan Africa's total population is under the age of 30.
IIED coordinated a series of online exchanges that connected 12 youth organisations from Benin, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, the Philippines, Uganda and Zambia. The young activists compared experiences and shared strategies, including using civic media such as videos, community surveys, mapping and data collection, to mobilise for change.
Participants produced short videos reflecting on young people's exclusion from urban processes and their advocacy strategies. The Nigerian participants' film went on to become an award-winner at the 2026 MegaCities-ShortDocs Film Festival in Paris, France. It has been selected for the festival's international programme, screened around the world in collaboration with UN-Habitat, the OECD and the C40 mayors' network.
These exchanges were part of a project in partnership with the University of Sheffield and the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights. IIED followed youth activists in two cities, Dharan, Nepal and Bhuj, India, documenting their learning about how to influence urban processes. The resulting publication offers grounded insights into how young people can use civic media to be heard on urban governance.
Bringing young voices to global discussions
In May 2026, IIED supported eight young housing activists to attend the World Urban Forum, the leading global conference on sustainable urbanisation. The young delegates took part in the forum, including panels and roundtables.
One of them, Samuel Okechukwu, produced a video showcasing their experiences. In the video, Aishwarya summarises the impact of these exchanges:
What has been really meaningful is to understand each other's cities, contexts and the various challenges... and the similarities that we're all facing together. So, I think we're all taking back the power of media and storytelling and the importance of being together in a space like this.
The connections between the young campaigners are continuing, building solidarity and momentum for change.
