Sunday, 26 May 2013
Dublin – The eighth biannual Forum of the World Alliance of Cities Against Poverty (WACAP) concluded in Dublin with bold promises to put words into action. More than 500 delegates from cities around the world met for two days to debate, discuss and deliberate on solutions to urban poverty challenges.
Thousands more attended virtually online, as this was the first WACAP Forum to take advantage of crowd sourcing, tapping into the experiences and expertise of people throughout the world for ideas and examples of how to best make cities smart, safe and sustainable. Through its social media approach, WACAP8 reached an astonishing 2.8 million followers online.
Hundreds of best practices in reducing urban poverty were presented at WACAP8, which concluded in Dublin. Cities from across Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas attended the Forum. Among the best practices that were show-cased, UN Women brought city delegates from Port Moresby, Quito, Kigali, New Delhi and Cairo to showcase its "Safe Cities Free of Violence against Women and Girls" initiative. Dublin is the first developed city to join this programme, which is a big step forward for the programme, and is expected to have a positive impact on safety within Dublin and other cities worldwide.
The delegates to the global forum were particularly interested in the efforts of Edmonton (Canada) to be a zero-waste city, and also its experience in working through public-private collaborations to make the capital city of Alberta more efficient and responsive to citizen needs. This is one example of a number of concrete solutions to real problems that WACAP8 has presented to city leaders and that will contribute to creating smarter, safer and more sustainable cities.
The outcomes of this Forum will be shared with hundreds of cities through the WACAP network in order to ensure that the inspiring ideas, suggestions and solutions will enable city leaders to build on the momentum of this event and translate the outcomes into tangible results in their own specific context.
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