City Leaders Programme

Empowering cities’ elected leaders, particularly women, for a sustainable urban future

Overview

City leaders is a systematic leadership programme for councillors in India’s cities focusing on women leaders, to catalyse transformation of the quality of life in India’s cities, and make our cities inclusive

Objective

To establish the need and opportunities for a systematic city leadership programme, with a focus on women leaders
To impart specially curated programmes across the spectrum of city leaders – councillors, mayors, standing committee chairpersons, ward committee members, and active citizenry
To equip city leaders with the knowledge and new-age tools to better govern the city and become true city leaders
To strengthen the hands of city leaders and truly empower them beyond training with continuous engagement and networking
To build a pan India city leadership programme

Expected Outcome

This initiative will act as a systematic leadership programme for councillors in Indian cities and shall be key to making our cities sustainable, resilient and inclusive from the bottom up.

Strategy

The need of the hour is to have empowered urban local bodies. Here is how our programme aims to meet this goal.

Deliver a systematic leadership programme encompassing: 1. Induction programme when the new council is formed 2. Refresher training including contemporary topics (Ex. New laws/policies/schemes, new technology etc.) 3. Continual engagement with the city governments and councillors
Embark on CLP engagement through three strands: 1. Emerging opportunities 2. Invitations by States / City governments 3. Swachhata capacity building programme
Achieve scale and speed through partnerships – knowledge and delivery partners
Leverage technology for digital deployment 1. Do not re-invent the wheel: Partner with world-class online learning platforms 2. Create digital certification models

Establishing the needs and opportunities

The report ‘City Leaders’ was launched by Mr Aaditya Thackeray, Minister of Tourism and Environment, Government of Maharashtra.

Reports

City Leaders of Karnataka

Download Report

Data nuggets

Roadmap

Journey of Councillors with City Leaders Programme

Footprints

Who did we train?

484 city leaders
107 directly elected mayors
316 first-time councillors
268 women city leaders
61 young city leaders

How were the CLP workshops received by the city leaders?

90% workshop attendance

85% response rate on post-feedback forms

93% agreed that workshop objectives were met

89% would recommend CLP workshops to fellow city leaders

95% want to have continual engagements in the future

Testimonial

Dinesh Kumar N

Mayor of Tiruppur City Corporation

The workshop was extremely interactive, I did not realise time went past so quickly, well done.

Female Councillor

Madurai City Corporation

It was a very useful session. Fear of communication is gone, I can now approach the citizens of my ward with confidence.

Male Councillor

Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation

I learnt how to get the needs of the people addressed through various government departments.

Female councillor

Ballari City Corporation

I did not know about the roles and responsibilities of a councillor before this (induction programme) and now I am learning.

Ashok Kumar Mohanty Chairperson

Dharmagarh NAC

The programme was good and the organisers were supportive. If workshops like these can be organised every three months then it will be very useful for the development of our district.