Linköping’s mayor will have young people as mentors this spring

This is part of a programme on reverse mentorship at European city councils

Linköping's municipal website announced yesterday that the city’s mayor, Lars Vikinge, has decided to participate in a reverse mentoring programme this spring. The “reverse” aspect here is that this time it will be the authorities who will listen to younger residents and the youth will be the ones directing the narrative and telling which issues are important according to them.

The programme is happening in the context of the European Year of the Youth and has been organized by Eurocities and the Finnish city of Espoo.

The youth as the carriers of the wisdom of the future

The European policies context is one of future orientation and concern for the upcoming generations, yet it is still largely decided and managed by people from the older generations. The idea of the programme is, thus, to spur on a true inter-generational dialogue on a local level.

What do the young people think is important to them in their city? What about their hopes and dreams and worries about the future?

On 28 February, the application process opened up for those who want to become a Future Mentor to Linköping's mayor. The application will be handled by a working group consisting of supervisors and Linköping Municipality's youth representatives. Three to four mentors aged 18-25 will be appointed. During the spring, the Future Mentors will meet Mr Lars Vikinge twice. 

They will also ask other young people in Linköping about their views on the city and the future. The representatives of youth organizations in Linköping will organize the meetings and participate in them and act as enablers. The topics discussed will be decided by the Future Mentors themselves.

“An important part for us is to reduce the perceived distance between young people and decision-makers. This project is therefore completely in line with what we want,” commented David Burman, youth representative at Linköping municipality.

The Swedish city’s mayor explained that he himself had experience participating in similar initiatives as a young man, where he had the chance to inform those in power about the relevant issues of the time. Hopefully, this will become a good practice and a tradition that widespread in Europe and beyond.