Cross Mentoring for Urban Survival

Urban youth peer groups pioneer successful strategies for navigating extreme urban life.

Real World Application

Youth pioneer new urban survival skills
In VUCA communities, youth will become the mentors for older community members in new methods of urban survival including urban computing, urban agriculture, and new literacies for building cooperative strategies. Combined with a growing youth media culture, youth may develop a public voice at younger ages, even becoming influential in political or religious movements.


Disciplines of readiness focus on building resilience
A VUCA world demands preparedness and clarity for unexpected futures. Personal life skills such as re-scripting a coherent, meaningful narrative of one’s personal life path outside of traditional social family and lifecycle norms become critical for navigating the surprises of VUCA. Communities will respond to VUCA with participative forms of governance, such as the bottom–up, participatory budgeting practice in Porto Alegre, Brazil, which has lifted the city to one of the best places to live in Brazil. Developing a culture and practice of readiness for students, families, and communities becomes a core function of public schools in VUCA communities.