School Street Programs at Scale: The Journeys of Rio de Janeiro and Cuenca
Following their participation in the 2025 Streets for Kids Leadership Accelerator, GDCI selected Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Cuenca, Ecuador, to receive dedicated technical assistance. Over the course of a year, GDCI worked alongside local teams to refine, strengthen, and scale the impact of their school streets initiatives. Here is a look back at the journey and key takeaways from this process.
GDCI’s Streets for Kids Program Helps Create Tirana, Albania’s First School Zone
At the end of 2020, GDCI selected Kahreman Yili—a busy street home to Gjon Buzuku school—as a Streets for Kids project site. The project's main objective was to address a number of issues in the area—including air pollution from vehicular exhaust, and wide lanes that enabled high travel speeds. The success of the Gjon Buzuku interim project led to the capital construction project at Edith Durham—a school located in Rruga Pjeter Bogdani, in the city center of Tirana.
