The Undugu Society, founded in 1974, has a long history of empowering youth and their communities through a variety of programs. These include informal schools, a fair trade shop, and community micro-finance. One of their primary functions is to serve street youth through the formation of Street Associations. The way an employee of Undugu described it to me is that homeless youth around the city usually live in groups at a “base.” They sleep there, but during the day they travel to different places in order to try and “hustle” a living. Some of these activities might be legitimate, like working as a porter or selling wares, others might not be, like snatching purses or cellphones.

This association provides sanitation services to its community

This association provides sanitation services to its community

Once Undugu locates these groups around the city, they assign a social worker called a “Project Officer” to monitor and advise the group. This officer encourages the “association” of youth to do a variety of things that might improve their livelihood. First, they ask them to raise enough money to register themselves with the government as a Community Based Organization (CBO). This allows them certain rights like the right to assemble, have a bank account, and function without harassment by the police. Second, they ask them to elect leadership in the group that includes a chairman, vice chairman, secretary, and treasurer. This gives the group an organizing structure and a system for making decisions and saving money. Thirdly, they encourage them to pool their creative and material resources into an entrepreneurial activity the might provide them with a more steady income. This might be a car washing business, clearing a garbage plot to plant and harvest crops, or collecting recyclable materials for resale.

Members take a rest

Members take a rest

Undugu has identified more than 140 such associations around the city and the number is ever increasing. Each of these associations is at a different stage of development. Some suffer from a lack of leadership, are plagued by issues with drug abuse, and may be dominated by members who are predatory opportunists. Others are highly functioning, have a strong sense of community, and have successfully started a money making venture that gives them both a study source of income and a sense of accomplishment. When Undugu identifies individuals within these groups that have particular potential, they may hire them to be “youth facilitators.” These young people are then employees of Undugu that assist and advise the social workers assigned to each region. They are a liason between Undugu and the community and also can help identify additional youth groups in the area that Undugu may not yet be aware of.

I feel the Undugu model of youth empowerment is both unique and pragmatic.  It also fits in well with the evolution of the mission of the organization.  Over the last decade, Undugu has shifted its focus from being strictly a service provider to becoming more of an advocacy organization. It was during this transition that they formed a relationship with the Advocacy Project as they sought a way to blend their older programs with new innovations. It is their hope that the Digital Storytelling Project that began last year can become more infused throughout the organization because it affords a unique opportunity for traditionally marginalized youth to participate in self-advocacy.

This group of all women has not yet registered their group

This group of all women has not yet registered their group

With the help of the project officers and youth facilitators we selected DSP participants from 7 different associations. We visited all of these associations beforehand to tell them about the purpose of DSP and what it could offer their association. Although we would only select one person from each community, this individual would be responsible for not just telling their story, but telling the story of the association as a whole. We also chose these associations in close proximity to each other so that through the interaction of these selected students, the associations they belonged to would benefit from a wider network of support and a wider range of ideas.

Though youth are often accused in the local media of being the source of disruption and violence, these young people in DSP seek to tell a different story. That of youth in poor communities who, despite the obstacles, are seeking constructive pathways towards civic participation and community empowerment.

The one room house is packed shoulder to shoulder with young people, all 18 to 25. I am at the officers meeting for SMART Club, a community based organization founded shortly after the 2008 post election riots. Its goal is to promote civic education among the youth in Kibera some of which were participants some victims of the election violence.

Peace Club Meeting, Kibera Slums

Kenneth Odogo Owade, the club’s founder, sits perched on the arm of one of the overcrowded sofas. He is bleary eyed because he worked three shifts in a row at the YMCA starting the previous afternoon. He will go back to work tonight, go straight to class the next day, return to Kibera for a nap, and start the process again earning in a month the equivalent of 80 US Dollars. Despite his weariness, Ken is never too tired to talk passionately about the importance of this club or the immense challenges that stand in the way of a young persons survival in a place like Kibera, a city like Nairobi, and a country like Kenya.

The name Kibera is notorious; the second largest “temporary settlement” in all of Africa, it is less than 700 acres but houses an estimated 1 million people. Despite the notoriety of Kibera, I once heard Kibera called the “most peaceful” slum in Nairobi. When I asked Henry, another attendee of the meeting about this, he at first responded with incredulity, but then after the brief pause conceded, “well, in Kibera, you won’t get mugged during the day.” At night it is a different story.

As a Muzungo (white person) I am told daily that I am a perpetual target in Nairobi and must always leave Kibera well before twilight. But squeezed shoulder to shoulder with these energetic, well-spoken young people who alternately debate and tease one another, I do not feel fear, pity, shock, or any other emotion that people who visit Kibera the first time often report experiencing. Despite the poverty and crime, the youth in this room are exactly what the world has been looking for. They are the segment of the “youth bulge” that could keep their country from plunging into the civil chaos that has plagued their neighbors Somalia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Sudan.

Kibera Alley

Before 2008, much of the world took for granted that Kenya was a bastion of stability in the Sub-Saharan Africa. People inside and outside the country reacted with shock at just how quickly the violence spiraled out of control. Conflicts that at first appeared to be tribal feuding, it later was confirmed, were in part the result of groups of youth that had been bribed by politicians first for their votes, then for their violence. Kenneth himself at the onset went out into the city center to take pictures in hopes of documenting the atrocities, “but I took five pictures and I had to stop. It was too much.” He instead went back to Kibera and did his best to calm people and evacuate members of targeted groups to safety. In his house he hid a woman who was a member of the targeted Kikuyu tribe, telling her if people came after her, to claim to be his wife. They came, she did, she survived.

Ken is exceptional, but he is not the exception. As the young people around me discuss micro-finance, team building, creating a budget, I think about an article I recently read entitled “Kibera youth always primed for violence.” Martyn Drakard a reporter from The Observer, a Ugandan newspaper, writes about the train track that run through Kibera being torn up in protest of recent tensions between the two countries. In it he claims:

“Kibera youth can be divided into several categories: those who traipse every morning to the factories five miles away hoping to catch the eye of a sympathetic foreman; those who stay in Kibera and run or are trying to start projects, such as selling water, managing public toilets and showers, disposing of waste; those who stay at home doing nothing; and the others who are ready at a moment’s notice to take to the streets or alleys in pursuit of some cause.”

But can the youth in this room where I am sitting be easily squeezed into any of these above categories? It is convenient when you are speeding through Kibera on a high-powered train or hurrying out of Kibera before sunset to miss yet another category of youth. The kind who, in the words of Kenneth, “Don’t let Kibera be on you. You be on Kibera.” You cannot see signs of Kibera externally. They don’t look poor, or “primed for violence,” but there is a fire within them to be on Kibera, on Nairobi, on Kenya to start opening pathways out of poverty and marginalization. To give them a platform for participation that is more permanent than the settlement in which they live. To pay attention to the youth before they tear up more than the train tracks.