In Amsterdam, a significant gender disparity exists in sports participation among girls. To address this issue, the city is seeking a technological solution to motivate more girls in Nieuw-West to engage in sports and exercise. This initiative is not just about promoting physical health; it recognizes the social benefits of sports, including personal growth, skills development, and the positive influence of interacting with others on a healthy lifestyle.

Amsterdam’s Challenge 3 focuses on this matter and counts on the host Floor Popkens, who works at the Sports department of the municipality of Amsterdam.

Interviewer: “What is the background to this challenge?”

Floor Popkens: “The Sport and Exercise Department has done a lot of research into why girls do or don’t practice sports and what they encounter in the city. When you live in poverty, practicing sports is sometimes a very big challenge for this target group and certainly not their priority. In almost every district of Amsterdam, far fewer girls are members of sports clubs than boys. Girls with a ‘city pass’ (a pass for people in Amsterdam with low income that entitles you to discounts and free activities) make much less use of it than boys of the same age. In general, people are often ashamed to use the city pass and many of the activities and facilities that the city provides are not used much. We focus on the areas where most progress could be made. Nieuw-West is such an area.”

Interviewer: “Why a ‘digital’ solution?”

Floor Popkens: “Many young people have an average of eight hours of screen time per day. Even substituting just one of these hours would be a valuable achievement. And then they also get in touch with people who can think along with them about this issue.”

Interviewer: “What has already been done and what didn’t work?”

Floor Popkens: “We are working primarily with schools. That is the place where all children come.

What we are offering now may be too non-committal. Those who already like sports come to these sports classes after school, and the real target group does not.”

Interviewer: “Anything else that you think may help towards a solution?”

Floor Popkens: “For girls, social life is very important. For example, they may be more willing to come to a sports class if it is combined with cooking or having meals together. We also have indications that the current sports offer is not flexible enough.”

As cities go through digital transformation there is a constant struggle for initiatives to offer successful innovative solutions to all. One of the main challenges to providing territorial cohesion is to unify the different sets of standards developed to address cities issues. The OASC and Living-in.eu support the interoperability of data among cities as a tool to foment integrated solutions worldwide. In this context, the Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms – MIM comes up to help cities and communities in this journey. MIMs are the minimal sufficient capabilities need to achieve interoperability of data, systems and services between buyers, suppliers and regulators across governance levels around the world.

This approach has in mind to establish a set of mechanisms across several domains and geographic areas, without having to specify everything in detail, and without requiring complete implementations or eventual compliances with other stakeholders. As a result, a minimal common ground is the work reference, which leads to reduced risk, increased investments, and innovation, among other benefits. With the European Commission support and OASC coordination, some MIMs are already in widespread use, setting the technical foundation for urban data platforms as well as solutions to cities and communities while pushing the space for Local Digital Twins and the CitiVerse to flourish.

To learn more about MIMs’ potential in scaling digital solutions and the MIMs that have been formally adopted check the OASC website: MIMs – Open & Agile Smart Cities (oascities.org/minimal-interoperability-mechanisms/).

Last week, CommuniCity was featured at the local broadcaster from Amsterdam Southeast, ZuidOost Tv, showcasing two challenges from the First Round of the Open Calls.

Soraya Semmoh, from the City of Amsterdam, talks on the importance of challenges 3 and 4 for the Southeast community. To help young citizens with legal problems and to insert them into new work opportunities, and the wildcard opportunity to create a solution with a technical component.

The applications are now closed, and the results of the selected pilots will be revealed at the end of April 2023.

Watch now the interview and promo video about the Amsterdam challenges of the First Open Call: