Tag Archive for: Youth

This is a guest post from Jamie Lundine, who has been collaborating with Plan Kenya to support digital mapping and governance programming in Kwale and Mathare. The original was published on Jamie’s blog, titled Information with an Impact. See part 1 of this series here: Digital Mapping and Governance: the Stories behind the Maps.

Mapping a school near Ukunda, Kwale County

Creating information is easy. Through mobile phones, GPS devices, computers (and countless other gadgets) we are all leaving our digital footprints on the world (and the World Wide Web). Through the open data movement, we can begin to access more and more information on the health and wellbeing of the societies in which we live. We can create a myriad of information and display it using open source software such as Ushahidi, OpenStreetMap, WordPress, and countless other online platforms. But what is the value of this digital information? And what impact can it have on the world?

Youth Empowerment Through Arts and Media (YETAM) is project of Plan International which aims to create information that encourages positive transformation in communities. The project recognizes young people as important change agents who, despite their energy and ability to learn, are often marginalized and denied opportunities.  Within the YETAM project, Plan Kenya works with young people in Kwale County (on the Coast of Kenya) to inspire constructive action through arts and media – two important channels for engaging and motivating young people.

Information in Kwale County

Kwale County is considered by Plan International to be a “hardship” area. Despite the presence of 5-star resorts, a private airport and high-end tourist destinations on Diani beach, the local communities in Kwale County lack access to basic services such as schools, health facilities and economic opportunities. Young people in the area are taking initiative and investigating the uneven distribution of resources and the inequities apparent within the public and private systems in Kwale County.

As one component of their work in Kwale, Plan Kenya is working with the three youth-led organizations to create space for young people to participate in their communities in a meaningful, productive way. There are different types of participation in local governance – often times government or other agencies invites youth to participate (“invited space”) as “youth representatives” but they are simply acting to fill a required place and are not considered  within the wider governance and community structures.

Youth representation can also be misleading as the Kwale Youth and Governance Coalition (KYGC) reports that “youth representatives” aren’t necessarily youth themselves – government legislation simply stipulates that there must be someone representing the youth – but there is no regulation that states that this person must be a youth themselves (they must only act on behalf of the youth). This leaves the system open to abuse (the same holds true for “women’s representative” – you can find a man acting on behalf of women in the position of women’s representative).  Plan Kenya and the young people we met are instead working to “create space” (as opposed to “a place”) for young people in community activism in Kwale County.

The 5 weeks we spent in Kwale were,the beginning of a process to support this on-going work in the broad area of “accountability” – this encompasses child rights, social accountability and eco-tourism. The process that began during the 5 weeks was the integration of digital mapping and social media to amplify voices of young people working on pressing concerns in the region.

To create the relevant stakeholders and solicit valuable feedback during the process of the YETAM work on digital mapping and new media, our last 3 days in Kwale were spent reviewing the work with the teams. On Thursday November 10th, we invited advisors from Plan Kwale, Plan Kenya Country Office, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and officers from the Constituency Development Fund to participate in a half-day of presentations and feedback on the work the young people had undertaken.

By far the work that generated the most debate in the room was the governance tracking by the KYGC. The team presented the Nuru ya Kwale blog which showcased 28 of the 100 + projects the youth had mapped during the field work. They classified the 28 projects according to various indicators – and for example documented that 23 of the projects had been completed, 1 was “in bad progress”, 2 were “in good progress” and 1 “stalled.”

The CDF officers (the Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer of the Matuga CDF committee in Kwale County) were concerned with the findings and questioned the methodology and outcome of the work.  They scrutinized some of the reports on the Nuru ya Kwale site and questioned for example, why Mkongani Secondary School was reported as a “bad” quality project. The officials wanted to know the methodology and indicators the team had used to reach their conclusions because according to the representatives of the CDF committee, the auditors gave the Mkongani Secondary School project a clean bill of health.

One important message for the youth based on feedback on their work was the need to clearly communicate the methodology used to undertake the documentation of projects (i.e. what are the indicators of a project in “bad” progress? how many people did you interview? Whose views did they represent?).

There is significant value in presenting balanced feedback that challenges the internal government (or NGO) audits – for example the data on Kenya Open Data documents that 100% of CDF money has been spent on the Jorori Water Project mentioned above, but a field visit, documented through photos and interviews with community members reveals that the project is stalled and left in disrepair. This is an important finding – the youth have now presented this to the relevant CDF committee. The committee members were responsive to the feedback and, despite turning the youth away from their offices the previous month, invited them to the CDF to get the relevant files to supplement some of the unknown or missing information (i.e. information that people on the ground at the project did not have access to, such as for example, who was the contractor on a specific project, and what was the project period).

Kwale youth with staff from Plan Kenya, officers from the CDFC and the local Youth Officer

Samuel Musyoki, Strategic Director of Plan Kenya who joined the presentations and reflections on November 10th and 11th, reported that:

“The good thing about this engagement is that it opened doors for the youth to get additional data which they needed to fill gaps in their entries. Interestingly, they had experienced challenges getting such data from the CDF. I sought to know form the CDFC and the County Youth Officer if they saw value in the data the youth were collecting and how they could use it.

The County Youth Officer was the most excited and has invited the youth to submit a business proposal to map Youth Groups in the entire county. The mapping would include capturing groups that have received the Youth Enterprise Fund; their location; how much they have received; enterprises they are engaged in; how much they have repaid; groups that have not paid back; etc. He said it will be an important tool to ensure accountability through naming and shaming defaulters.

The 5 weeks were of great value — talking to quite a number of the youth I could tell — they really appreciate the skill sets they have received-GIS mapping; blogging; video making and using the data to engage in evidence based advocacy. As I leave this morning they are developing action plans to move the work forward. I sought assurance from them that this will not end after the workshop. They had very clear vision and drive where they want to go and how they will work towards ensuring sustained engagement beyond the workshop.”

The impact of digital mapping and new media on social accountability is still an open question. Whether the social accountability work would have provoked similar feedback from duty bearers if presented in an offline platform (for example in a power point presentation) instead of as a dynamic-online platform is unknown.

The Matuga CDF officers were rather alarmed that the data were already online and exposed their work in an unfavourable light (in fairness, there were some well-executed projects as well). There is a definite need to question the use of new technology in governance work, and develop innovative methods for teasing out impact of open, online information channels in decision-making processes and how this is or isn’t amplifying existing accountability work.  There is definite potential in the work the young people are undertaking and the government officers consulted, from the Ministry of Youth Affairs and local CDF Committee (CDFC) stated that they were “impressed by the work of the youth”.

Within the community development systems and particularly the structure of devolved funding, there is a gap in terms of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) that the CDF committee to date has not been able to play effectively. As Samuel Musyoki stated the youth “could watch to ensure that public resources are well utilized to benefit the communities.” The Youth Officer even invited the youth to submit proposals for assistance in buying GPS gadgets and computers to strengthen this work.

Continuing the on and offline integration

As discussed, the work in Kwale on various issues is dynamic and evolving. The 5 weeks we spent with the teams were meant to provide initial trainings and support and to catalyse action that would be continued by the youth in the area, with support from Plan Kenya. Not only did we provide training to the young people, but Plan Kwale staff were also involved in the process and started documenting their work through the tools and techniques introduced by our team. With these skills, the Plan Kwale staff will support the on-going field mapping and new media work. We are also available to provide remote assistance with questions about strategies and technical challenges.

Some of the future activities include:

  • Holding a “leaders forum” during which the youth interact with a wider cross-section of stakeholders and share their work.
  • Continuing work on their various websites – updating the sites with results from social auditing work to be carried out throughout the last weeks of November, as well as digitizing previous information collected during historical social auditing.
  • Validating the data by revisiting some project sites and documenting projects that haven’t been done yet, gathering stories from some of the Project Management Committees, taking more photos, and potentially conducting surveys within the communities to get more representative views on project evaluations.
  • Each group also needs to develop a more structured advocacy strategy to direct their activities in these areas.
  • All teams expressed interest in developing proposals to submit to the Ministry of Youth Affairs, through the Youth Enterprise Fund and CDF Committee, based on the suggestion of potential funding for this process. Plan Kwale staff, as well as some of the Country Office advisers offered to support the youth in developing these proposals.
  • Most importantly, the teams want to consult the wider community in their respective areas to demonstrate the relevance of YETAM, including the skills they have gained, to the community stakeholders (beyond the relevant government authorities

The potential of new technologies, including digital mapping to promote accountability, is only as powerful as the offline systems into which it is integrated. Without offline engagement, existing community systems of trust and recognition will be threatened and thus undermine any online work. The youth must remain grounded within their existing work and use new technology to amplify their voices, build their network, share their stories and lessons and learn from and engage with others.

This is a guest post from Jamie Lundine, who has been collaborating with Plan Kenya to support digital mapping and governance programming in Kwale and Mathare.

Throughout October and November 2011, Plan Kwale worked through Map Kibera Trust with Jamie Lundine and Primoz Kovacic, and 4 young people from Kibera and Mathare, to conduct digital mapping exercises to support ongoing youth-led development processes in Kwale county. One of the important lessons learned through the Trust’s work in Kibera and Mathare is that the stories behind the mapping work are important for understanding the processes that contribute to a situation as represented on a map. To tell these stories and to complement the data collection and mapping work done by the youth in Kwale, the Map Kibera Trust team worked with the Kwale youth to set up platforms to share this information nationally and internationally. Sharing the important work being done in Kwale will hopefully bring greater visibility to the issues which may in the longer term lead to greater impact.

Sharing stories of local governance

To support their work on social accountability, the Kwale Youth and Governance Consortium (KYGC) mapped over 100 publicly and privately funded community-based projects. The projects were supported by the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), Local Area Development Fund (LATF), NGOs and private donors. As one channel of sharing this information, the Consortium set up a blog called Nuru ya Kwale (Light of Kwale). According to KYGC the blog “features and addresses issues concerning promotion of demystified participatory community involvement in the governance processes towards sustainable development. We therefore expect interactivity on issues accruing around social accountability.” This involves sharing evidence about various projects and stories from the community.

One example is the documentation of the Jorori Water project in Kwale; through the mapping work, the Governance team collected details of the constituency development fund (CDF) project. The funding allocated to upgrade the water supply for the community was 6,182,960 ksh (approximately 73,000.00 USD). From their research the KYGC identified that the Kenya Open Data site reported that the full funding amount has been spent.

A field visit to the site however revealed that project was incomplete and the community is still without a stable water supply, despite the fact that the funding has been “spent.”

Jorori Water Project KwaleJorori Water Project, built using approximately 6.2 million shillings (73, 000.00 USD)

Read more about the questions the team raised in terms of the governance of CDF projects, including the detailed the project implementation process and some reflections on why the project stalled. This is information on community experiences (tacit information) that is well-known in a localized context but has not been documented and shared widely. New media tools, a blog in this case, provide free (if you have access to a computer and the internet) platforms for sharing this information with national and international audiences.

Addressing violence against children and child protection

Another blog was set up by the Kwale Young Journalists. The Young Journalists, registered in 2009, have been working with Plan Kwale on various projects, including Violence against Children campaigns. The group has been working to set up a community radio station in Kwale to report on children’s issues. Thus far, their application for a community radio frequency has encountered several challenges. New media provides an interim solution and will allow the team to share their stories and network with partners on a national and internal stage.

The Kwale Young Journalists worked with Jeff Mohammed, a young award-winning filmmaker from Mathare Valley. The YETAM project not only equips young people with skills, but through peer-learning establishes connections between young people working on community issues throughout Kenya. The programme also provides young people with life skills through experiential learning – Jeff reflects on his experience in Kwale and says:

KYJ filming the enemy withinJeff and the Kwale Young Journalists shooting a scene from “The Enemy Within”

“My knowledge didn’t come from books and lecturers it came from interest, determination and persistence to know about filmmaking and this is what I was seeing in these Kwale youths. They numbered 12 and they were me. They are all in their twenties and all looking very energetic, they had the same spirit as mine and it was like looking at a mirror. I had to do the best I could to make sure that they grasp whatever I taught.”

Jeff worked with the Young Journalists on a short film called “the Enemy Within.” The film, shot with flip-cameras, tells the story of 12-year-old girl who is sold into indentured labour by her parents to earn money for her family. During the time she spends working, the young girl “falls prey of her employer (Mr.Mtie) who impregnates her when she is only 12 years old.” Jeff reflects that “early pregnancies are a norm in the rural Kwale area and what the young filmmakers wanted to do is to raise awareness to the people that its morally unacceptable to impregnate a very young girl, in Enemy Within the case didn’t go as far because the village chairman was bribed into silence and didn’t report the matter to higher authorities.” This is a common scenario in Kwale, and the young journalists plan to use the film in public screenings and debates as part of their advocacy work in the coming months.

Jeff and the Kwale Young Journalists shot the film in four days – they travelled to Penzamwenye, Kikoneni and also to Shimba Hills national park to shoot 7 scenes for the movie. Read more about Jeff’s reflections on working with the Kwale Young Journalists on his blog.

Sharing ecotourism resources

The Dzilaz ecotourism team – a group that encourages eco-cultural tourism in Samburu region of Kwale county — also integrated social media into their work. During the last week (November 8th-12th) the group set up a blog to market the community resources, services and products. They also plan to document eco-culture sites and the impact that eco-tourism can have on the community. As of November 10th, 2011 the Dzilaz team had already directed potential clients to their website and thus secured a booking through the information they had posted.

The importance of telling the stories behind the maps

One important component to mapping work is to tell the stories behind the map. The three groups in Kwale are working to build platforms to amplify their grassroots level work in order to share stories and lessons learned. The information documented on the various platforms will develop over time and contribute to a greater understanding of the processes at a local level where youth as young leaders can intervene to begin to change the dynamics of community development.

"Mohamed suffered a lot. He worked hard. But when he set fire to himself, it wasn't about his scales being confiscated. It was about his dignity." —Mannoubia Bouazizi, Tunisia Photograph by Peter Hapak for TIME

2011 will be remembered as the year that democratic awakening occurred in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Activists used information and communication technology (ICT) tools to organize and coordinate political demonstrations that brought an end to long-standing regimes and paved the way to landmark elections.

Time Magazine fittingly awarded the “Person of the Year” accolade to the protester. What would come to be known as the “Arab Spring” began in Tunisia’s under-developed town of Sidi Bouzid, where the late Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor whose wares were confiscated by the police, set himself on fire outside of a government building in December 2010. Few would have predicted that Bouazizi’s actions would trigger an uprising that brought an end to Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s 23-year-old regime on January 14th.

Video clips of the first protests, including demonstrations at the spot where Bouazizi set-himself on fire, were recorded on mobile phones, posted on YouTube, and spread across Tunisia and in the Arab world when they were shared on Facebook before news media outlets such as Al Jazeera began running their stories, reports Robert Mackey in the New York Times.

The Tunisian revolutionary spirit spread in neighboring Egypt. Inspired by events in Tunsia, political demonstrations began in January as thousands took to the streets in anti-government protests against poverty, rampant unemployment, corruption, and demanding an end to the 30-year autocratic rule of President Hosni Mubarak, writes Cara Parks in The Huffington Post.

Aware of the potent effect that social media had in Tunisia’s uprising, the Egyptian government blocked Facebook, Twitter, and later Internet services to lead a crackdown on the largest protests the country had witnessed since 1970s, according to Parks. Despite violent clashes with the riot police, protests  kept going not only in Cairo, the capital, but also in Alexandria and Suez, and two other major cities.

Photo Credit: Huffington Post

The revolution’s main goal was achieved with the resignation of President Mubarak on February 11th. Activist Wael Ghonim, a marketing manager for Google who played a significant role in organizing the January 25 protests by reaching out to young Egyptians on Facebook, credited the social networking site for the success of the Egyptian people’s uprising, says Catharine Smith in The Huffington Post.

“[…] This revolution started on Facebook. […] We would post a video on Facebook that would be shared by 60,000 people on their walls within a few hours. I’ve always said that if you want to liberate a society just give them the Internet. […],” Ghonim told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview that Facebook and the Internet were responsible for the uprising in Egypt.

After Egypt, it was the turn of Syrians to protest against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Pro-democratic demonstrations began in January and young Syrians, inspired by the ousting of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt, began organizing protests online and then took them to the streets.

In this citizen journalism image made on a mobile phone, Syrian men carry bread loaves during a protest against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, in the coastal town of Banias, Syria, May 3, 2011 Photo Credit: AP

Syrian activists have been working their computers and mobile phones, updating Facebook pages, sending out messages over Twitter, and uploading videos onto YouTube to inform the outside world of what was taking place in their surroundings since foreign reporters were banned, reports Margaret Besheer for VOA news.

Libya was the revolution’s next stop in North Africa . Protests broke out in February in the eastern city of Benghazi and escalated to an armed conflict as forces loyal to Muammar  Gaddafi clashed with anti-government rebels. Gaddafi was captured and killed on October 24 bringing an end to four decades of autocratic rule.

Libya Crisis Map illustrates how ICTs can be applied in a conflict situation. This web-based platform was created by the Standby Task Force, and used the Ushahidi crowdsourced crisis reporting system to map latest news from Libya gleaned from Twitter and traditional news sources.

The LibyaCrisisMap platform was activated by the request of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to the Standby Task Force (SBTF). The platform was fully handed over to OCHA supervision in April 2011, and continued to be supported by a team of volunteers until June 4th of 2011.

 

Yemenis also took up the streets in February to protest against President Ali Abdullah Saleh calling for his resignation. Saleh agreed a deal, in which he will transfer power to his deputy by February 2012, ahead of elections. Young Yemeni Activists are however angry that the deal guarantees immunity for Mr Saleh and his allies, reports the BBC.

The Kingdom of Bahrain, with financial, equipment and manpower backing from its Saudi neighbor, is the only government in the MENA region to  have successfully crushed pro-democracy demonstrations, reports Adrian Humphreys in the National Post.

Revolutions in the spring paved the way to landmark elections in the fall.

Tunisian politicians engaged voters via YouTube ahead of the October 23rd elections of representative for the new Constituent Assembly, which will ratify a new constitution and appoint a new transitional government that will schedule elections for a permanent government. Tunisia Live, a startup news portal,  launched Tunisia Talks on YouTube where citizens asked questions to politicians.

Egyptians also queued up in numbers at polling stations in the country’s first democratic elections. Citizens took up the responsibility to monitor the electoral process blogging and Tweeting about irregularities and fraudulent activities. Parliamentary elections will end in March and Presidential elections are scheduled for mid-2012.

ICTs in form of social media platforms, cell phones, and the Internet played a significant role in the push for democracy and governance not only in the MENA region but also throughout the world.

CrowdOutAIDS, the online crowdsourcing project that engages young people in developing a UNAIDS strategy on youth and HIV, has wrapped up its fifth week. The project launched in October 2011 and will run for two months, with the final crowdsourced strategy to be produced in January.

Crowdsourcing is a technique used to quickly engage large numbers of people to generate ideas and solve complex problems. CrowdOutAIDS’ target “crowd” is young people, 3,000 of whom become infected with HIV every day and 5 million of whom currently live with the virus.

The project’s approach is to follow a four-step model:

  1. Connect young people online
  2. Share knowledge and prioritize issues
  3. Find solutions
  4. Develop collective actions on HIV

Once the fourth step is completed, the UNAIDS Secretariat will put the youth strategy into action, and the strategy could become an advocacy platform in future UNAIDS work.

Currently the project is in the second stage of sharing knowledge. Youth from all over the world have been connected through eight regional Open Forums that are in Arabic, English, Spanish, French, Russian and Chinese. The moderator of each forum starts each day with a question (such as “What is your description of a healthy relationship?”) and participants respond and interact with one another.

CrowdOutAIDS steps

The first week of the project revealed some of the major problems, in the eyes of youth participants, with UN agencies’ current approaches to working with youth. Participants expressed concerns that UN initiatives of working with youth in HIV response lack strategic vision and have no clear plan, and hinder young people from participating in decision-making.

It will be interesting to see what solutions are developed after the knowledge sharing step is completed, as well as what direction the UN youth and HIV strategy takes over the next six weeks. Be sure to check out the CrowdOutAIDS website and Twitter @CrowdOutAIDS for continuous updates.

Photo: Voices of Africa

I have been searching online for the past couple of weeks for signs on people working on ICT4D projects in the refugee camps in the Horn of Africa.  Through a reference from a friend I stumbled upon the news page for Voices of Africa for Sustainable Development (VOA4SD).  The Dadaab mission team is doing on the ground ICT4D work, often shooting from the hip and trying to see what works.  Though this approach isn’t ideal, I have to hand it to them for working in the camps themselves.  Their experiences are ones that we should all learn from regarding ICT4Education projects, ICT in Humanitarian crises, and youth in development.

To quickly explain the context of the VOA4SD Dadaab mission team’s experience thus far, three young VOA4SD members arrived at Dadaab Refugee Camp on July 20th.  Their first goal was to deliver medical equipment from GIZ, the German Development Organization.  After successfully delivering the equipment, they documented any ICT access, needs, and current projects in the camp.  They stayed in the camp until August 1, 2011, upon which they returned to Nairobi to create a more comprehensive ICT strategy, DadaabNet, for the camps with other important stakeholders.

Now, DadaabNet is a Global Giving initiative, attempting to raise $10,000 to create the youth-run radio station, as well as providing computers and Internet access for interim schools and health centers.

The VOA4SD experience in their own words from their blog:

  • Day one – Ifo Camp:
    • It was not long before we saw an internet cafe. After speaking to the owner to establish his needs and those of the camp we quickly ascertained that the youth were in desperate need of something to fill their time and they already loved ICT. Everyone was using internet via the mobile phones, but do not know how to transfer the skills to a computer. Facebook was said to be extremely popular among the youth with photos being a prized possession. One disabled young man we met had been traveling more than 20 km twice a week by matatu to take computer studies courses. His motivation was truly amazing. He enthusiastically said that he believed all the youth in Dadaab would love to learn how to use computers and they already their phones to post to Facebook in Arabic.”
  • Day four – Formed a proposal for DadaabNet:
    • DadaabNet will bring wireless information, communications, and education to Dadaab, the worlds largest refugee camp. Our mission is to create a youth run community Internet service and education provider. The project will bring a wireless intranet, internal camp/refugee communications system and the lowest cost internet access throughout Dadaab and the nearby vicinity. Intranet will host free educational materials including videos made in Somali to be accessed through mobile phones and computers. We will make available educational materials pertaining to health, nutrition, sanitation, as well as education resources on computer training and how to use technology for sustainable development.  The structure works like this: To view the materials a refugee would give their name, email, and mobile phone number. This becomes the base for our youth communications system. This will empower the youth to be managers of their own communications networks with management and oversight from the NGO partners. Youth can create networks within the system, take courses, become peer trainers, and will gain the skills necessary for employment both inside and outside of the camp. Internet will be made available at a low rate to increase affordability.”
  • Day five – meeting with Norweigan Refugee Council on their Youth Empowerment Program:
    • We spoke to them and quickly established both their need and the programmes need for ICT infrastructure and training. The youth empowerment training includes life skills, basic computer skills, numeracy and literacy, plus a choice of vocations: masonry, hair dressing, electronics, and tailoring. According to the YEP manager, the students have shown immense interest in computer studies with a majority of youth enrolling in the program to have a chance to learn how to use a computer.  The first stop was the teachers lounge. David called together the teachers, 12 in total so we could be introduced. The teachers were primarily local Kenyan staff and were very welcoming. When we shared the idea about DadaabNet, bringing in a new ICT4D curriculum, and lower cost equipment. They were eager to tell us how they were going to use it in their classrooms. The computer teacher currently has no internet so he was the first to want to engage the students online. He showed us the one simple dongle that was used by all the teachers for internet. It was the only access in the school and they all had to share, leaving little time for learning new skills and gathering educational content for their classes. The hair dressing teacher said she would use the internet to show her students different styles of hair design and she had heard somewhere that there were websites that would show the students different hairstyles on the same head. I laughed as this is one of my seven year old daughters favourite online games. The electronics teacher was also eager to have access so that he could show his students diagrams of the equipment they are repairing and use online materials to teach them how to repair computers in addition to the mobile phones they are learning to repair now. All of the teachers were supportive and you could see their heads filling with positive ideas with the mention of increased technology and improved internet access.”
  • Day seven – Youth Targeted by Militants:
    • It is my understanding that the extremists target youth aged 15-24 most intensively. They are young, easily trained, and because for the culture have great respect for authority. This is the very reason why WE are people who want a free and just world without violence must also recruit the minds and hearts of these young and vulnerable. If we can reach them with education, opportunities for self-employment, ways to advance out of the misery, we can become a beacon of hope. The darkness is so heavy in the air that you can feel it on your skin and no amount of bathing can take it away. Just to smile and talk about the potential of a future with these youths has shown me that they are still reachable.  …The NRC organization has the only youth programs in the Dadaab area. Their efforts are commendable and we are working through the appropriate channels for partnership. Yet their current program can only reach a maximum of 600 youth due to lack of space and facilities and there are more than 1000 youth showing up EACH WEEK in need of hope and support.”
  • Day 10 and summary of needs:
    • The refugees we spoke to as well as other NGOs really want a radio station run by the youth for the youth. With the implementation of DadaabNet this is a simple and low cost program. We hope to work in conjunction with the media team from UNHCR and Lutheran World Foundation. What is great about this idea is that it could be used as a platform to teach the refugees about their rights and the laws which are meant to protect and support them such as the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the Kenyan Refugee Act, and the new Kenyan constitution. Most of the refugees we spoke to had no knowledge of any of these documents despite being the prevailing jurisdiction controlling their lives.”

What can we learn from VOA4SD’s experience in the camp?

  • There is a huge lack of infrastructure and communication capabilities in refugee camps.  ICTs of any sort are helpful.
  • The youth are idle in refugee camps and spend the little money they have on computer access.  Clearly, then, they have the time and the desire to learn how to use ICTs.  If nothing else, ICTs can at least distract children from getting involved with rebel groups, terrorist organizations, or gangs.
  • Young refugees are familiar with the problems in the camps and can quickly identify various ways in which ICTs could solve problems.

 

m-pesaWe would be missing the full significance of ICTs if we do not see them as an integral part in the efforts to improve the everyday life of rural folk in Kenya. Mobile technology being the key mode of communication in the country has contributed greatly to local youth livelihoods. Using mobile phones, the youth have able to access knowledge and information which are vital aspects for improving agricultural development by increasing agricultural yields and marketing.

With accessibility of mobile phone networks throughout the country, services such as Safaricom’s mobile money transfer (M-Pesa), mobile money banking (M Kesho) and information on agricultural produce markets have created job opportunities for the youth as the number of agents increase.

Kamau a young Kenyan in his late twenties from a farming community in Nakuru who approached Equity Bank in 2007 for a loan to set up an M-Pesa shop is an example. As well as farmers and traders were enabled to deposit or withdraw money using their mobile phones, Kamau was able to pay back his start-up loan in just six instalments. “This is to bring financial services to a place where people lack them” he explains.

By simplifying money access, members of the community have more money at their disposal and therefore are more likely to spend it locally. The service has also enabled farmers and traders to purchase inputs and make orders with their suppliers without having to travel into town. The savings made on transport costs enable them to acquire more stock, which means that the entire community benefits from more goods being available locally.

Kamau’s business has also benefitted from transactions made by the farm owners residing in a nearby Nakuru town, who do not have to commute to the village to pay their casual labourers. These farm owners are also able to pay their faming supervisors for land preparation and purchase of fertilisers and seeds.

In 2008, the entire region of Nakuru experienced a severe drought, which led to widespread crop failure, and Kamau noticed an increased flow of money through his business due to remittances from relatives in urban areas. “This service has strengthened friendships and social interactions in the community,” Kamau says. “Moreover, this has greatly contributed to the success of my business. This means that the entire community benefits from the goods available.”

With the revenue generated by his M-Pesa business, Kamau has diversified into farming, now leasing 20 acres of land. He also receives information about husbandry practices from the Organic Farmer e-bulletin, published by the International Centre for Insects, Pests and Ecology (ICIPE), through his data-enabled mobile phone, helping him to grow maize, beans and potatoes.

The subscribed SMS-based ‘411 Get It’ alerts service, a joint venture between Safaricom and the Kenya Agricultural Commodity Exchange (KACE), also provides Kamau with information on agricultural produce and market prices, enabling him to identify favourable markets and cut out middle men. With the profits from his farm, Kamau opened an M-Kesho business, allowing community members to make deposits from their M-Pesa accounts into an Equity Bank account where they earn interest. “This is an incentive for rural youths to engage in farming,” Kamau adds.

During the planting and weeding season, Kamau’s operating capital is reduced as his customers increase their M-Pesa withdrawals. To counter this problem, Kamau took out another loan from Equity Bank to purchase a motorcycle so that he could travel to Nakuru town quickly to top up his M-Pesa account. As a result, he has a steady flow of cash in order to facilitate local business transactions.

Regardless of an increasing range of information services available through the internet, literacy remains a stumbling block for many people because these services are only supplied in official languages. The technologies therefore need to be adapted in such a way as to be accessible in a variety of local dialects to help farmers have easy access to modern farming information and technologies, especially to battle hunger despite dry spells. Access to ICT services would also help to foster local skill building and knowledge sharing between rural communities.

Kamau’s experiences and business understanding clearly show the important linkages and synergies that exist between the development of ICTs and information sharing that can support the livelihoods of a large cross-section of youth and other members of communities for agricultural and rural development.

By Chris Mwangi – I am affiliated to Agriculture, Rural and Youth in the Information society (CTA-ARDYIS Project). Its function is to raise youth awareness and capacity on agricultural and rural development issues in ACP countries through ICTs

Girl on phoneThe use of ICT to strengthen youth employability in the developing world ought to be pursued vigorously. To be clear, ICTs aren’t the only route to improving the employability of youth, but it should be used as a key tool because of the anticipated growth potential and youth employability crisis experienced by most societies in the developing world.

Youth constitute more than half of the world’s population, of which 81 million are unemployed− 7.8 million more than the number in 2007− a disproportionate number as youth only make up a third of the world’s working population. No where is youth employability constraints worse than in the developing world, where over 87 percent of the world’s youth live. This is a huge development challenge. Clearly, a deeper engagement with youth is needed to foster more sustainable futures. That must start with efforts to equip young people, a demographic force, with marketable ICT skills because of the immense employment and wider economic opportunities head.

Barely 15% of the half a trillion dollar global IT-enabled services market, which is expected to treble to between US$1.5 and 1.6 trillion by 2020, has been tapped, according to the World Bank. Developing regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa reap the least rewards from this unprecedented opportunity for economic growth and skilled jobs. The fact that they experience higher youth and overall unemployment levels should serve as an impetus for creating an enabling environment for ICT innovation and expansion. It is a paucity of ICT skills across the continent that cause it to lag so far behind amid rapid growth in the telecoms and services sector. This reduces the potential returns on ICT investment, restricts the quality of service delivered and stifles new investment across a continent in need of rapid and sustained new businesses.

As the World Bank’s flagship ICT initiative for Africa, the New Economy Skills for Africa Program: Information and Communication Technology (NESAP-ICT), puts it: “The lack of skilled manpower is a binding constraint to realizing the potential of the sector. Even India which has 30% of the global labor supply suitable for the industry expects a shortfall of 0.8 to 1.2 million skilled workers for its ITES industry by 2012.” The onus is therefore upon the Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing parts of the world “to boost its “talent” profile so as to benefit from this burgeoning market opportunity”.

That talent profile depends on the nature and quality of training and education that the developing world’s youth are exposed to. It is my view that a range of incentives and curricular reforms are needed to ensure that young people are suitably trained to acquire jobs in the ICT sector and explore entrepreneurial opportunities.

The current mode of education in most developing countries is outmoded. Significant curricular reform is needed, including the creation of advanced ICT curricular modules to supplement and be integrated into basic ICT courses for youth in schools, youth centers and technology hubs. By improving the curriculum in developing countries with enhanced ICT focus in the fashion proposed, skill levels and employability among young people will improve. Furthermore, these employability skills are likely to enable more young people to venture into entrepreneurial activities.

Plural+ poster

There are more than 1.2 billion young people aged between 15 and 24 years in the world, accounting for about 18 per cent of the world population, but living thousands of miles apart, rarely engaging with one another.

Multimedia platforms, like video, help the young, bright leaders of tomorrow engage in intercultural conversations—speaking beyond language barriers to provide a subjective youthful view of their countries and reducing cultural tensions for future generations.

The United Nations Alliance and the International Organization for Migration has united to celebrate the International Youth Day’s theme—Our Year, Our Voice—with their PLURAL+ Video Festival.

The video festival is an empowering tool for young people aged 9-25 to speak out about their opinions and experiences with migration and diversity.

“My video is about how I see diversity,” said 10-year-old Aarohi Mahesh Mehendale, winner of the PLURAL + 2010 International Jury Award (Age 9-12).

It would be amazing if we could live in peace and harmony and accept differences. I chose to do the video because I felt strongly about the topic

Through five-minute films, the applicants use their own views and voices to explore subjects about migrant integration, inclusiveness, identity, diversity, human rights and social unity, in an effort to foster globalized social harmony.

Developing countries are home to 87 per cent of youth who face challenges of limited access to resources, healthcare, education, training, employment and economic opportunities.

The PLURAL+ Video Festival is a form of video advocacy, a means for youth from developed countries to explore the challenges experienced by those in developing countries, and empathize with their struggles.

Although this project has good intent, the logistics of the equipment and details on how to film are largely inaccessible and problematic.

The PLURAL+ project intends to engage youth in video advocacy to foster understanding, but is missing a vital element—providing the actual video cameras and training on how to use them.

Although there are “useful links” on the website, this project should really consider partnering with an organization like WITNESS, who specialized in video projects in developing regions.

Having an alliance with an organization in this area of expertise can help prevent problems that PLURAL+ may encounter—making the project more useful for those youth in developing countries whose perceptions should truly be seen and heard.

In downtown Ramallah, West Bank, five programmers at the Palestine Information and Communications Technology Incubator (PICTI) are forging a new future for the Palestinian IT industry through a unique collaboration with US-based tech giant Microsoft. The partnership between Microsoft’s Innovation Labs (or iLabs) in Tel Aviv, Israel, and USAID’s Enterprise Development and Investment Promotion project (managed by CARANA) led to a one-year outsourcing pilot, new iLabs products and the evolution of a long-term relationship—as well as a model for private sector alliances between Israeli and Palestinian firms.

Palestinian programmers at work on the iLabs project

Since 2009, the PICTI-based team has developed three new products for iLabs to be marketed globally: Mixer, which links users’ online profiles (e.g., Facebook) with their registered Bluetooth devices to recognize them when they enter a room; Ark, which gathers online information about movies and television shows to make personalized recommendations, including an active learning component that adapts to user likes and dislikes; and HomeVideoX, which applies face-recognition capability to videos.

Microsoft recently spoke with PICTI about creating another five-person team in Ramallah to work on Bing Mobile applications. Ultimately, the PICTI team hopes to form an independent Microsoft research center in Palestine. The collaboration has exposed Palestinian IT professionals to new technologies, helping the industry developing a more qualified labor force and demonstrating Palestinians’ ability to work with leading global technology firms. Team members have also become an in-house resource for PICTI, helping the incubator evaluate new projects and coach future entrepreneurs.

The collaboration leverages the unique situation in the West Bank—including proximity to Israel’s leading IT industry and the willingness of both parties to set aside political differences for business success. The Microsoft initiative and similar projects with other leading IT innovators such as Cisco and Salesforce.com are fostering an important new Palestinian industry.

“I see the future of the IT sector in this vital project with Microsoft which proves that Palestinians have huge talent, skill and expertise not only in the deployment of IT services but also in the research and Development field,” said PICTI’s chairman, Hassan Kassem. “This is the real path for development in Palestine.”

This post was originally published in July 2011 by Carana Corporation.

Linda Raftree speaking at GBI Brown Bag Lunch

Photo Credit: Laurie Moy

Last Friday, GBI sponsored a Brown Bag lunch at USAID featuring Linda Raftree (@meowtree), Senior ICT4D Advisor at Plan International USA, to discuss her experiences on her digital participatory mapping project in Cameroon, lending insight on how the team got it off the ground.

Utilizing the mapping platform Open Street Map and crowd-sourcing tool Ushahidi, Raftree and Plan International’s Youth Empowerment through Technology, Arts and Media (YETAM) project, aims to reduce violence against children and increase youth participatory governance.

During her discussion last week, she referenced how digital community maps have replaced the need for paper-based diagrams since they can be shared or updated, to put rural areas like Ndop, Pitoa and Okola, “on the map”.

The more pragmatic purpose of being, “on the map,” Raftree alluded, is to see where infrastructure and services are being provided by local councils. Maps illustrate the uneven distribution of funding and services, and show what areas need more inclusion, holding governments to their development responsibilities.

Linda Raftree speaks at GBI Brown Bag Lunch

Photo credit: Laurie Moy

To ensure local participation and encourage youth empowerment for the three principal components of her project—maps, video, and art—Raftree advised some of these following elements:

  • Ask community leaders, and youth the information they want to put on the map. Raftree found that the youth wanted to know where all of the chieftain of the surrounding villages lived since traditionally greeting them first when arriving to a village is a respectful custom. What an international organization, or its stakeholders, want does necessarily line up with what the community needs or finds relevant.
  • Hire local ICT experts.  She had found a local GIS expert named Ernest on Twitter and through Limbe Labs (now Activspaces). Without him, Raftree admitted, the project would not have been nearly as successful, or predicted to be as sustainable. Local ICT experts know the language, law of the land, and projects can be easily supported by them teaching others in the community how to maintain the mapping systems long after outside organizations leave.
  • Engage decision makers.  There is usually a hierarchy within communities, so involving big players is imperative for successful deployment. Both to evade bribery—the team had youth carry around a letter signed by the local mayor stating it was okay for them to collect information—and to make leaders accountable for gaps in funding and services.
  • Record it. The Cameroonian youth went around with video camcorders, and recorded interviews they had with leaders of certain institutions, and members of the community. For example, they went around to schools and interviewed the headmasters about what resources they had at the school, and with women on why they did not register their newborn children. The benefit of this is two-fold. They raised the headmaster’s awareness on for the importance of keeping data on key indicators of the school (numbers of students, benches, attendance, teachers), Raftree stated, while making politicians accountable to the imbalanced circulation of disbursement.
  • Mix technology with non-technology. The art portion of the project, where the youth draw pictures of social issues existing within the community—such as alcoholism, drug use, and domestic violence—raised problems that were uncomfortable to record on film or talk about. Despite a lack of sound or words, art is still a powerful visual empowering the community to engage in a dialogue about taboo subjects.

The end result of all these steps in the 3 districts in Cameroon? Leaders acknowledged giving funds to central areas, and began to allow youth to take part budget meetings. The youth were given a voice in a place where they were never even part of the discussion.

Linda Raftree speaking to attendees after the event

Photo credit: Laurie Moy

Although Raftree covered a lot of problem areas that could have arisen in a community mapping project, she recognized that issues such as connectivity and ICT training, are still barriers to entry that need to be addressed for a project’s overall sustainability.

How about the next steps for the Plan International’s YETAM project in Cameroon?

Having youth continue to follow-up with database collection, making community councils accountable for their findings, and integrating information into Plan’s overall decision making.

 

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