Youth-Focused Neighborhood Improvement in Buenos Aires

The city of Buenos Aires is paying close attention to its kids. After Mayor Mauricio Macri was re-elected to a second term in July 2011, he put the city's youth high up on his agenda. As a result, the city's Youth Policy Office saw its annual budget soar from $800,000 to $8 million.

All that extra money means the agency can afford to think more broadly about how policy affects young people and how they can engage with the city. While most city-run youth-focused programs tend to concentrate on keeping kids out of trouble or promoting safe sex or training teenagers to enter the workforce, Buenos Aires is using this extra funding to take its youth-centric mission much farther. Through a variety of arts- and culture-based efforts, the Youth Policy Office is engaging the city's most vulnerable youths to help improve some of the Buenos Aires's most dilapidated and derelict areas.