What happens when good ideas meet weak execution? In the Youth City Changing Faces Competition, young people are learning to design, plan and manage public space projects in Dandora, Kamukunji and Korogocho. But for three teams — Korogocho Market Food Waste Management Champions, Loopers CBO, and Wapole Kijee — the journey came to an early stop. Their disqualification wasn’t about failure. It was about accountability. The Korogocho Market team never broke ground. Despite guidance, they failed to submit a real implementation plan and their site remained untouched for weeks. Loopers CBO in the same cluster struggled with coordination and quality, replacing planned chain link fences with bamboo sticks and leaving groundwork incomplete. In Kamukunji, Wapole Kijee’s team fell behind on schedules and quality control even exceeding budget limits and ignoring repeated reminders to revise their plan. Each case revealed the same challenge: passion without structure. The competition’s Code of Conduct exists to uphold PSN’s standards of transparency, quality, and integrity, ensuring that public spaces are built safely, sustainably and with community trust. Accountability in Youth City isn’t about exclusion, it’s about protecting the integrity of transformation. Every team receives mentorship, site visits and hands-on feedback to help them learn how to plan, budget, and execute responsibly. And those who stumble become examples that strengthen the process for everyone else. As PSN expands the Youth City model across Nairobi, these lessons are shaping a stronger next phase, one defined by discipline, collaboration and follow-through. Stay tuned for next week’s Youth City stories featuring teams that overcame similar hurdles and turned lessons into transformation on the ground.