Helping girls reclaim the streets of Beirut

Riham’s horizons are broadening. However, for most teenage girls in Lebanon, the opposite is happening. 

For girls growing up in Karantina and across Lebanon, their freedom to use public spaces shrinks as they get older. By the time they reach adolescence, many public spaces are effectively off limits, with few facilities, and restrictions on the time they can spend and activities they can do there. 

Leaving the house becomes a task that must be planned in advance, using specific routes to avoid secluded spaces where they risk verbal or physical harassment. Usually, teenage females will be accompanied by a male relative or caregiver on most journeys out of their home. 

Combining academic research with practical action to drive transformative change 

Founded in 2014 by Bartlett alumni Joana and Riccardo Luca Conti, CatalyticAction uses innovative participatory design processes to create spaces that reflect the diverse needs and aspirations of the communities and young people who inhabit them. 

With 58 successful projects, their work provides rich material and case studies to feed back into academic research frameworks at The Bartlett and elsewhere. Working closely with both The Bartlett Development Planning Unit and the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, CatalyticAction’s board of trustees includes Dr Andrea Rigon, Associate Professor at The Bartlett Development Planning Unit. 

Andrea values highly the working relationship between CatalyticAction and The Bartlett. “We’re involved in many research projects, but this partnership provides a fantastic way to translate research into impact ‘on the ground’. As a professor, I can’t buy five tons of concrete and do all this work – but that’s what’s possible with CatalyticAction. 

“The two founders, Joana and Riccardo often come to teach our students, and we use their case studies in our core courses. It’s a cycle of impact – based on the research and teaching, people go and do amazing things, but then the amazing things they do then feed back into the teaching and our research.” 

Helping children understand their own transformative power 

The participatory research approach pioneered by CatalyticAction and the associated research bodies has been enshrined in a handbook published in partnership with UNICEF and UN-Habitat, the UN’s global urban development programme.  

The concepts and strategies outlined in the handbook will help funders understand how child-responsive interventions (such as these Minecraft-inspired public stairs in Mar Mikhael or the intervention in Makani that Riham enjoys) can have a profound effect at both the community and the individual level. 

Using participatory planning to improve intersectionality 

Gender inequalities aren’t the only problem in Karantina – the influx of Syrian refugees to the neighbourhood and  the compounded crises Lebanon has been going through has led to increased social tensions. 

Participatory planning research provides useful tools to help young people from different backgrounds explore and defuse these tensions – and as previous CatalyticAction projects have shown, interventions aimed at children can help bridge distances and ease conflict in the broader community. 

As Andrea points out, the benefits of participation in projects like these can be even greater for children affected by displacement. “The participatory process of planning and designing your own space is something that radically empowers people. Particularly children affected by displacement. Their life happened to them, rather than them shaping it.”  

This latest project is still in the initial stages, but anticipation is high, especially amongst the girls for whom participation is itself an act of empowerment. 

“It keeps getting bigger… every activity we do, more girls are coming. Girls are talking about the project and seeing the possibilities and impact, and they're telling the other girls to come and join,” says Joana.