IT’S TIME TO TAKE UP OUR SPACE
By: Kisima Podcast
Tags: Civic Engagement, Governance, Youth

youth participation

In every sector and every space today, young people are on the agenda. It is therefore ironical that despite all the attention, we continue to be grossly underrepresented and misrepresented.

Only 6.5% of the country’s parliament is made up of youth. Not only that, programs and schemes that are meant to benefit them are more often than not hijacked by opportunists with ulterior motives and selfish interests. Young people are rarely ever at the heart of these plans and are often locked out of key conversations and decisions which affect them, both directly and indirectly.

At the core of the crisis is that young people have not been empowered with the information they need to navigate the world successfully, and are left to figure it out by their own means. In fact, leaders at both the national and local levels seem to only pay attention to young people when they need their strength and gusto to spread their propaganda campaigns, or to cause chaos on their behalf.

Civic education and active participation offer solutions to this problem. Through civic education, we can acquire necessary skills and knowledge to participate in governance, as opposed to passively accepting policies and decisions that may be detrimental to us. The premise of democracy, after all, is rule of the majority.

Further, civic education helps us understand why politics and government are necessary, the purposes of government and alternative ways of organizing.

Effective civic education can help us arrive at a society and a government in which human rights are respected; the individual’s dignity and worth are acknowledged; the rule of law is observed; citizens willingly fulfill their responsibilities, and common good is the concern of all. As young people, we should understand that our involvement in political life and in civil society is the key to improving the quality of life in our neighborhoods, communities, and nation. The attainment of individual goals and public goals tends to go hand in hand with participation in political life and civil society.

Where government has failed in this aspect by not having well-functioning and coherent civic education programs, organizations such as the Uraia Trust have taken it upon themselves to ensure information gets to the people through their work with community organizations. Through various programs such as “Rooting Democracy in Kenya through an Informed Citizenry” they aim to provide quality civic education and empower Kenyans to exercise their civic duty in order to realize their constitutional aspirations.

Mobilization is key because if we want our voices to be heard, we must become active participants in the political process. Although elections, campaigns, and voting are central to democratic institutions, we also have other means at our disposal such as petitioning, speaking, or testifying before public bodies, joining ad-hoc advocacy groups, and forming coalitions. These participatory skills are taught to us in civic education as well.

We must realize the kind of power we hold. We must mobilize and form communities or work within our existing ones to channel our energy towards real, sustainable change. We must demand better from our leaders, and not settle for empty promises and 50 shilling bribes. We need to contest for positions of power, so that we may be the drivers of change. We must take up our space, for it sure as hell shall not be handed over to us.

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Ⓒ Gloria Masheti, June 2021