NAIROBI March 21, 2019 By Esther Kaburu
[Youth from Kenya’s low-income communities can play an active and positive role in making their communities better through generating knowledge that contributes to local peacebuilding efforts]- an excerpt from the study
Gregory Okumu, a Together for a New Africa (T4NA) project participant, took part in a two-years long (2017-2019) Participatory Action Research (PAR) work which was funded by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP); where he serves as a Generation Change Fellow and member of the Youth Advisory Council globally. This research work included other five Gen Change fellows from Kisumu, Nairobi and Mombasa (the thematic areas of the research) who together facilitated the training of other youth researchers from those respective counties.
PAR is a bottom-up approach to finding out how grassroots can be engaged in finding solutions to their own problems. Without forcing the communities to prove a hypothesis, PAR provides more inclusive and participatory approaches for taking part in the research process. This method was applied to investigate different challenges facing communities with the young people taking the lead in the action research work with root causes for youth unemployment, youth and good governance, and the counter violent extremism and counter terror being the research areas respectively.
The research which was published as “Participatory Action Research for Advancing Youth-Led Peacebuilding in Kenya” concludes that PAR is a practicable and effective approach for youth to proactively engage with their local communities and governments around critical issues.
Dr. Melchior Nsavyimana, the T4NA Project Manager, graced the occasion of the launch of the publication at the US Embassy in Gigiri, Kenya.
