Safe City Tour: Together We Create a Safe Oslo (SaLTo)

Categories: City stories
Udgivet: 09 Jun - 2021

The Safe City Tour travels to Oslo

New action plan against hate speech, strong cross-sectorial cooperation and robust follow-up of measures, improving living conditions, preventing youth crime and drug abuse, supporting vulnerable youths to employment and education, city-wide mentoring scheme, and taking the SaLTo approach to create a safe city for all in Oslo. 

 

The 14th week of the Safe City Tour took us to the Norwegian capital of Oslo, where Vice Mayor for for Employment, Integration and Social services, Rina Mariann Hansen welcomes us to the city. The Norwegian capital highlighted it’s strategy to create a safe city for all, how the SaLTo model works, examples from local practitioners on their efforts to prevent drug abuse and crime, and the importance of the city-wide mentoring scheme as a supplement to the preventive work.

 

Images: Oslo Municipality

In 2021 Oslo works with Nordic Safe Cities to take action on the outreach work towards youth to prevent hate crime. The City of Oslo will also develop a new action plan to prevent hate crime and hate speech.

More broadly, Oslo’s model for crime prevention is referred to as the SaLTo model (Together we create a safe Oslo). It is a cross-sectorial and collaborative model based on Scandinavian crime prevention. The model primarily works with crime prevention among children and young people but has been extended to operate with all age groups in the prevention of extremist violence and hate.

On our first day in Oslo, Vice Mayor for for Employment, Integration and Social services, Rina Mariann Hansen provided us with insights into the situation in Oslo and the importance of SaLTo’s work and cross-sectoral cooperation.

– Hansen emphasised that “Oslo MUST be a safe city for everyone. A city that sees diversity as a strength for the community. A city where everyone, regardless of who they are, where they come from, what they do or do not believe in, and who they fall in love with, should know that Oslo is their city”.

Oslo is working towards a higher preparedness against hate rhetoric, conspiracy theories and extremism, and will this year have its own action plan against hate speech and attitudes.

– “The action plan will mobilize the municipality, knowledge environments and civil society for a joint effort and will ensure a coordinated and robust follow-up of measures. The goal is that no one in our city should be met with hateful statements and attitudes,” states Hansen.

Watch the video below to learn more about Oslo’s work to improve living conditions and empower vulnerable young people through jobs, education and leisure activities. And how the city uses its SaLTo network to collaborate effectively across sectors and disciplines.

 

 

On the second day of our virtual visit to Oslo, the professional leader of the SaLTo secretariat, Hege Bøhm Ottar, explained the SaLTo model and how they work on drug and crime prevention at different levels in Oslo.

– “In Oslo, the municipality and the police work together to prevent drug abuse and crime among children and young people. We also work together to prevent hate crime, radicalisation and violent extremism. This collaboration is called SaLTo”, explains Ottar.

«SaLTo» stands for «Together We Create a Safe Oslo».

– “In SaLTo, we collaborate both at the individual district level, across district boundaries, together with state actors and voluntary organisations”, continues Ottar.

– “At each district and Oslo city centre, we have a SaLTo coordinator with responsibility for the local coordination of the drug and crime prevention. Each district has its own challenges and different organisation, and there will therefore be local differences in the work.”

– “We are many who work for the best for children and young people and the interdisciplinary collaboration is absolutely crucial to create a safe Oslo”, concludes Ottar.

Learn more about SaLTo in the video below.

 

 

On the third day of our visit to Oslo, three SaLTo coordinators gave us examples of how they work locally to prevent drug abuse and crime among youths.

– “Most young people who stay in the city centre are there to meet friends and engage in positive activities. But there are also young people involved in environments where drug abuse and crime take place. The actors in the SaLTo collaboration work to prevent negative development and follow up on youth groups and concerning individuals”, explains Nana Mensah.

– “The school is an invaluable partner in the drug and crime prevention work. They are where the youth are every day and have an opportunity to uncover, prevent and follow up on concerns together with the district and the police”, continues Isabel Mühleisen Ojo.

– “We are many who contribute to the work of reversing a negative development – leisure, health, outdoor contact, child welfare, NAV, school, parents and the police. Many have complex challenges that require complex solutions from many different disciplines. The young people deserve that we work together and do our best for them to succeed with their future,” concludes May Britt Grunnaleite.

Learn more in the video below.

 

 

On the fourth and final day visiting Oslo, the city presented their city-wide mentoring scheme.

– People in different phases of life may need follow-up and individual conversations. Oslo has therefore developed a mentor program or more simply explained mentor follow-up. The mentor program is linked to the SaLTo model in Oslo and is offered on a voluntary basis to specific target groups within the SaLTo work.

The mentor courses are individual and adapted to the individual’s needs and challenges. In the follow-ups, the mentors use their own experience and knowledge to guide the mentee, give advice, motivate, ask questions, listen and challenge.

Since each individual mentor course is different, and the mentees have different interests and different goals, Oslo have recruited a number of mentors to a mentor bank. All the mentors have been recruited on the basis of their skills in relationship building, their competence in working purposefully and with one-on-one follow-up.

The mentor bank consists of both women and men, with different backgrounds and from different age groups. A varied mentor bank makes it easier to find a mentor who can match well and who can assist the mentee in achieving their goals.

Learn more below.

 

 

This concludes the Safe City Tour in Oslo. Learn more about the SaLTo model and how they work in Oslo below:

Safe City Portrait

Follow the Safe City Tour as it continues to Esbjerg, Denmark, June 14 – 18,  on the Nordic Safe Cities Twitter and LinkedIn feeds.