Denmark

Community case

About the area / country

Husum-Tingbjerg, Denmark

Tingbjerg is a residential area with approximately 6,000 residents located on the outskirts of Copenhagen. Tingbjerg was developed on farmland originally belonging to the farms in Husum. Around 1900, the Municipality of Copenhagen purchased large portions of this farmland, ceased agricultural activity, and established residential gardens and housing developments in what is now Tingbjerg.

At the end of the 1960s, the composition of the population in Tingbjerg changed. The housing estate had relatively few large family homes, and with the significant increase in welfare in the 1960s, it became financially feasible for many families to purchase a detached house with a garden. As a result, many of the original residents moved away from Tingbjerg, leaving many apartments empty. Social housing gained a more negative image among parts of the population. Like other social housing areas, Tingbjerg gradually came to house a growing number of immigrants, residents on welfare, and other disadvantaged groups.

Tingbjerg has been associated with integration problems and has for a number of years appeared on the government’s official lists of particularly disadvantaged residential areas. In 2022, however, the area was removed from the list due to too high incomes, lower crime rates, and fewer residents outside the labor market – all defining criteria for deprived residential areas.
On January 1st 2022, 6,236 people lived in Tingbjerg parish with 79% of these being immigrants or descendants of immigrants by 2020; the highest proportion among all parishes in Denmark.

About the organization(s)

Information about the organizations, schools, municipalities, etc., where the pilots are being conducted.

Fælles om Husum-Tingbjerg in collaboration with ActionAid Denmark

Fælles om Husum-Tingbjerg (Together for Husum-Tingbjerg) is a comprehensive social housing initiative that encompasses 18 housing departments across three different housing associations. The project is administered by FSB (formerly ‘Foreningen Socialt Boligbyggeri’ which translates to ‘The Social Housing Association’).

Fælles om Husum-Tingbjerg works to foster community engagement and promote active societal participation. The initiative supports educational efforts to improve the academic performance of children and youth, increasing school readiness and encouraging continued education. The master plan covers 18 housing departments within FSB, AAB, and SAB, covering a total of 5,008 homes and approximately 10,600 residents.

ActionAid (Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke) collaborates with the social housing initiative Fælles om Husum-Tingbjerg to engage young people in local communities, including through Tingbjerg Ungefællesskab. ActionAid contributes its experience in supporting young people in disadvantaged residential areas in projects as Fælles om Husum-Tingbjerg.

ActionAid Denmark work to promote democracy and strengthen the influence of vulnerable and underserved groups whose rights are at risk. Their activities focus on supporting young people in advocating for their rights and contributing to the development of democratic and sustainable societies. They assist young people in building their capacity to express their views and engage in dialogue with decision-makers to advocate for social and environmental justice.

As part of the international federation ActionAid, they operate in more than 45 countries and engage directly with over 25 million people affected by poverty and inequality. Founded in 1944, they continue to operate globally within these fields.

Focus areas in FSB’s comprehensive social housing plans

1

Education and life chances: Children and young people must receive academic support so that more children are ready for school and more young people pursue an education.

2

Employment: More adults in the area must be connected to the labor market.

3

Children and young people must be supported in leading a life free of crime, and residential areas must be perceived as safe.

4

Cohesion and citizenship: More residents must be part of the community and participate actively in society.

For more information visit

https://www.fsb.dk/om-fsb/boligsociale-helhedsplaner/faelles-om-husum-tingbjerg-2024-2028/

https://faelles-om.dk/

Pilot Fælles om
Husum-Tingbjerg

The implementation of the pilot will include young people – mostly from minority groups – in Intersectional Participatory Action Research-and-Deliberation (I-PARD) phases:

Phase 1

In the first phase of the process, it has been essential to establish good cooperation with our partners, understand their local context, their work with young people, and their aspirations for strengthening the inclusivity in everyday life as well as young people’s access to participation more generally within the context of the organization. In this phase, we have continuously coordinated with the professionals on how we can work with them using the I-PAR-D method to combat mechanisms that create inequality and support young people’s engagement and democratic participation. We also facilitate a start-up workshop for professionals focusing on approaches to intersectionality and deliberative democratic participation. This phase runs from September 2025 until December 2025.

Furthermore, the SINCRONY research group in Denmark has translated and contextualized the SINCRONY ‘Youth Intersectional Participatory Action-Research and Democratic Deliberation’ training program into a toolbox that fits into the cultural context of Danish schools and organizations working with youth and invited all participants in the YCO network in Denmark to reflect, discuss, and give feedback on the toolbox and training course for professionals. The training material is to be further developed during the next phases and will be delivered to the partner at the end of the I-PAR-D process. This phase runs from September 2025 until December 2025.

Phase 2

A participatory process with young people from minority groups in communities to strengthen engagement and counter power imbalances within the community. This phase will primarily take place in the context of local youth clubs and organizations administered by Fælles om Husum-Tingbjerg by FSB in collaboration with ActionAid. The process will last from November 2025 until June 2026, and the methods of the intervention will be grounded in the toolkits developed as a result of the SINCRONY project’s research phase. In this phase, it is crucial to underline that the young people with whom we work have influence on which methods to work with and which problems will be identified as relevant to continue exploring and combating, as the processes are youth-led.
However, the toolkit will continuously be an object of reflection and discussion with the professionals for the purpose of both evaluation and implementation.

Phase 3

An inclusive deliberative debate aimed at strengthening democracy and social justice by making participation more inclusive and meaningful for minority youth. This phase will take place from May 2026 until June 2026. The aim is to reach out to and empower youth, especially those with experiences of marginalization, to regain a sense of political agency in contexts of participation and decision-making while fostering awareness for exclusionary mechanisms and inequalities both in everyday life contexts and societal structures.

School case

About the city / area / country

Brøndby, Denmark

Brøndby is located as a Suburb of Copenhagen, located in the southwestern part of Zealand. Population: Approx. 40,000

About the school

The school pilot setting is a vocational training school with departments across different locations and cities in central Copenhagen as well as the greater Copenhagen area. Since the establishment of vocational health care education in Denmark in the early 1990’s, SOSU H has offered vocational training tracks centered on social, healthcare, and childcare. In addition, SOSU H offers 10th grade as well as EUX Welfare which combines academic upper-secondary education with vocational training in health- or childcare. SOSU H’s student body is diverse across both ethnicity and age, albeit less diverse in relation to gender, as most of its students are female. On average, 4,500 students attend SOSU H each year.

For more information about this school

visit https://sosuh.dk/

Pilot

The implementation of the pilot will include students – both majority and minority groups – in Intersectional Participatory Action Research-and-Deliberation (I-PARD) phases:

Phase 1

In the first phase of the process, it has been essential to establish good cooperation with our partners, understand their local context, the student body, and their aspirations for strengthening the inclusivity and democracy in everyday school life as well as young people’s access to participation more generally within the context of the school. In this phase, we have continuously coordinated with the professionals on how we can work with them using the I-PAR-D method to combat mechanisms that create inequality and support young people’s engagement and democratic participation. We also facilitate a start-up workshop for professionals focusing on approaches to intersectionality and deliberative democratic participation.
Furthermore, the SINCRONY research group in Denmark has translated and contextualized the SINCRONY ‘Youth Intersectional Participatory Action-Research and Democratic Deliberation’ training program into a toolbox that fits into the cultural context of Danish schools and organizations working with youth and invited all participants in the YCO network in Denmark to reflect, discuss, and give feedback on the toolbox and training course for professionals. The training material is to be further developed during the next phases and will be delivered to the partner at the end of the I-PAR-D process. This phase runs from September 2025 until December 2025.

Phase 2

In phase 2, students across the school’s educational tracks are invited to a participatory process that encourages and empowers them to identify issues and invoke changes through I-PAR-D methodology. The pilot phase 1 will be driven in collaboration between teachers, researchers and the students themselves, and will primarily take place during the scheduled lessons, where teachers and the SINCRONY research group in Denmark will facilitate the process. The process takes place from December 2025 until June 2026, and the methods of the intervention will be grounded in the toolkits developed as a result of the SINCRONY project’s research phase.

In this phase, it is crucial to underline that both the students and the teachers influence which methods they work with, what problems will be identified as relevant to continue exploring and combating, and how to apply the methods, as the processes are meant to be youth-led while still needing to fit into the curricula and activities in the scheduled everyday life in the school. However, the toolkit will continuously be an object of reflection and discussion with the professionals for the purpose of both evaluation and implementation.

Phase 3

In phase 3, an inclusive decision-making assembly aimed at transformative change in school will take place. This phase will take place in May-June 2026. Here, students from different educational tracks, the student council, teachers, and relevant stakeholders related to the student-identified problem will be present. The deliberation is aimed at strengthening the students’ political self-efficacy and participation, and the common awareness of how different student groups encounter different obstacles, have different needs, and experience their everyday life in the school context differently. Within the school, the intervention will focus on power relations both inter-categorical and intra-categorical, with consideration to how structural imbalances influence power relations in the students’ everyday life. Overall, the intervention aims at strengthening the inclusion and democratic participation in the school.

Contact
information

Maria Bruselius-Jensen

(Associate professor, Aalborg University): mariabj@ikl.aau.dk

Lika da Cruz

(Research assistant, Aalborg University): likahdc@ikl.aau.dk

Helene Hoffmann Jensen

(Research assistant, Aalborg University): hhje@ikl.aau.dk
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