Safe City Tour: Community cohesion in Larvik
Categories:
City stories
Udgivet: 18 Dec - 2020
The Safe City Tour travels to Larvik
Building community cohesion, involving local civil society and businesses to support vulnerable families, promoting inclusion and diversity, and empowering local youth to create a cool and safe city in Larvik.
The fifth week of the ‘Safe City Tour’ travelled to the Norwegian city of Larvik. During the safe city tour week, Larvik invited the local and global public on a virtual visit, where the political leadership highlighted why Larvik is part of Nordic Safe Cities, how the city involves the local civil society and businesses to support the most vulnerable families through Christmas, and how the city empowers and involves local youth to build bridges and create a safer city through the Colour Games and All’IN youth initiatives.
Images: Larvik Municipality
Within the Nordic Safe Cities Alliance, Larvik’s ‘Safe City Action‘ focuses on implementing a new strategy across the municipality, and developing and implementing the next phase of Larvik’s youth engagement strategy, All’IN, to empower young peeople and create local youth ambassadors.
More broadly, the city of Larvik invests heavily in good basic services to empower children and youth to prosper and to feel included. Larvik further focuses on the importance of continued dialog with different groups in the city. Over the past 5 years the municipality has prioritised regular meetings with all spiritual and religious leaders. These meetings focus on creating understanding and acceptance for differences and encouraging inclusion. The meetings are a very high priority and led by the mayor. Leaders are encouraged to be open to ensure that challenges can be identified early and so that the municipality can assist if needed.
On the first stop of the Safe City Tour, Deputy Mayor Rune Høiseth, welcomed us to Larvik and provided insights into the benefits of being part of this network of similar Nordic cities that can inspire and learn from each other. Larvik has been part of the Nordic Safe Cities Alliance since its initiation in 2016, and continues to take an active role to prevent hate and extremist violence and create a safe and inclusive city for its citizens.
The city further prioritises to give local youth a strong democratic voice and a role in shaping Larvik into a cool and safe city for young people to live and grow up.
Larvik uses the All’IN approach to involve and empower young people to lead the way in shaping a cool and safe city with a focus on generosity, inclusion and diversity. One of the All’IN initiatives is the #hilsforfaen (say hello) digital campaign encouraging a more open society and for different people to be more welcoming towards each other.
Larvik also uses the All’IN method to engage different actors in their action plan to prevent violent extremism.
Another approach to create a safer and more inclusive city for young people in Larvik, is the ‘Fargespill’ (the colour games). Every week 100 children and young people between the ages of 7 – 25 meet to practice together. The focus of Fargespill is to see every person as a resource and asking what can you contribute? What can you teach others? Rather than what do you need. Because everyone has qualities that others can learn and gain from.
Through music and dance, Fargespill Larvik builds bridges, knowledge and understanding across different cultures. The Fargespill model is a certified method that is employed in multiple Norwegian cities.
Creating strong community cohesion and supporting vulnerable groups is a priority in Larvik. To help vulnerable families during Christmas, there is very special Christmas tree on the town square in Larvik. It is decorated with the wishes of local children and young people living under the poverty line. The local community can choose which wish(es) to grant and deliver the presents through the Red Cross.
The tree on the square is a collaboration, which started five years ago, between the local voluntary sector, the business community and the municipality.