17 Rooms Virtual Kick-Off: Room 16 – Creating a Handbook to Effectively Communicate the Imperative of Preventing Urban Violence

In 2022, the world is confronting an acute mix of political, economic, and environmental challenges.  But these global strains are not a reason to shy away from problem-solving.  Instead, they call for doubled-down efforts to tackle underlying issues, including those embedded in the world’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030.

The Brookings Institution and The Rockefeller Foundation invite participants to contribute to this compelling vision as part of the annual “17 Rooms” global flagship process. Room 16, a working group on SDG 16 for Peace, Justice, & Strong Institutions, will be co-led by Rachel Locke, Director of the Violence, Inequality and Power Lab at the University of San Diego and Marvin Rees, Mayor of the City of Bristol. It focuses on developing a handbook of effective strategies to communicate the imperative of preventing urban violence with a justice lens, to be used by advocates, Mayors, funders, practitioners, and policy makers.

17 Rooms strives to offer a new and energizing approach to generating practical actions, novel insights, and a collaborative sense of community across the diverse constituencies working to advance the SDGs. Within the flagship process, each SDG-focused Room meets periodically over the course of a few months – roughly May through September – to develop its own answer to a common question:

What are 1 to 3 actionable next steps that our Room can identify and advance over the coming 12-18 months (i.e., by the end of 2023) to improve some component of our Goal’s 2030 outcomes?