STORIES FROM THE FIELD:The UN-Habitat Urban Youth Fund project development process becomes a tool for youth empowerment in Kibera

By Caroline Guillet and Carole MacNeil

Supporting youth to be active partners and agents

of positive change is a key idea of Youth-Led De-

velopment (YLD), and an important guiding prin-

ciple for UN-Habitat´s work in the area of youth. Youth-

led development (YLD) is an asset-based approach that

moves young people from passive objects of develop-

ment efforts, and places them instead at the center of

their own and their communities’ development.,1 YLD

supports youth in developing sense of their own capac-

ity and assets to change not only the environment in

which they are living, but also to change their own direc-

tion within and through this environment.2 Youth-led

development is not necessarily easy to implement, par-

ticularly in contexts of poverty. Yet, as the story below

illustrates, it has the potential to create opportunities for

youth even when other efforts have not succeeded.

UN-Habitat, as one of the UN agencies at the center

of youth voice and empowerment, has been actively

involved in building knowledge about the concept and

practice of youth-led development for the last decade,

and has developed five key principles that help define

authentic youth-led development.

1 For research on Youth-Led Development, including years of data on hundreds of youth initiatives and how they are making a positive difference in their communities all over the world, see the Global Youth-Led Development Series, published by the United Nations Human Settlements Organization (UN-Habitat).

2 Sadan, E. (2004). Empowerment and Community Practice, downloaded from: http://www.mpow.org/

These “Five Principles of Youth Led Development,”

developed by UN-Habitat in 2007, are:

1. Youth define their own development goals

and objectives;

2. Youth have a social and physical space to par-

ticipate in development and to be regularly

consulted;

3. Adult mentorship and peer-to-peer mentor-

ship are encouraged;

4. Youth act as role models to help other youth

engage in development; and

5. Youth are integrated into all local and nation-

al development programs and frameworks.

To support grassroots youth-led initiatives globally, and

to create a mechanism for increasing the field’s knowl-

edge of promising practices related to YLD, UN-Habitat

launched the Urban Youth Fund in 2008. More than

simply a grants program, the Urban Youth Fund is a

comprehensive program that incorporates best practices

in financial and non-financial support through capacity-

building tools, processes, mentor programs, and train-

ings.

This story highlights the successes and challenges of a

collaboration between Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI),

an NGO specializing in public space development in

Nairobi’s Kibera slum, and Usalama Youth Bridge Re-

form (Usalama), a group of youth working to expand

economic opportunity for Kibera’s young people. It ex-

plores how the group utilized the Urban Youth Fund’s

capacity-building tools to build the skills and knowledge

of the youth involved and strengthen the work of the

collaboration. Their story also illustrates some important

lessons learned about the process of youth-led develop-

ment and how the Urban Youth Fund process and tools

might be of use to other groups.3

3 The “tools” referred to in this article include e-learning modules and a training manual and

THE SETTING FOR THE COLLABORATION

KDI and Usalama work in the community known as Kib-

era in Nairobi, Kenya, believed to be one of the world’s

largest slums in East Africa with an estimated popula-

tion ranging between 100,000 and 500,000 inhabit-

ants.4 Young people make up a large proportion of the

population of Kibera, with half of all Kibera residents

under 15 years old.5 Kibera residents face complex chal-

lenges similar to residents in other informal settlements,

such as lack of educational opportunities and lack of

access to basic services or land security, which in turn

negatively impact the opportunities available for the

young people who live there. Unemployment or under-

employment affects an estimated two-thirds of Kibera

residents, who live on less than $1/day.6 Jobs are scarce

in comparison to the number of people wanting to enter

the labor market. As a result of these challenges, young

people can easily lose hope in their future and some may

choose to engage in criminal activities, when no other

options seem available.

In the midst of these challenges, however, opportunities

for young people still exist. The story of the Usalama

Youth Bridge Reform group illustrates how youth-led

development opened up opportunities to youth who

previously felt they had few opportunities available.

Their story shows how a youth-led group came together

to improve both their livelihood opportunities and their

surrounding environment.

companion workbook on a wide range of project development and organizational develop-ment topics, including project planning, logic models, stakeholder analysis, risk assessment and management, organizational structures, budgeting and financial reporting, public relations, and monitoring and evaluation. For more information, please see www.unhabitat.org/youth

4 See, for example: http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2007/presskit/pdf/sowp2007_eng.pdf, http://www.popcouncil.org/uploads/pdfs/AdolKiberaSlums.pdf, http://www.mapkibera.org/blog/2010/09/05/kiberas-census-population-politics-precision/, http://kiberalawcentre.org/facts/, http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/kenya-nairobi-land-rights-kibera-stateless-nubians-citizenship-development.

5 See: http://kiberalawcentre.org/facts/

6 See: www.wfp.org/news/news-release/kenya-crisis-second-slum-food-distribution

FORMATION OF THE PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN

USALAMA AND KDI

The Usalama Youth Bridge Reform group began as a

loosely-formed group of young people who gathered

near one of KDI’s prospective sites on the border of Laini

Saba, Mashimoni and Lindi villages. During construc-

tion work in the area, some of the youth took jobs that

they refused to fulfill properly, and at times their ongo-

ing presence limited access to the site during and after

completion. It became clear—to the youth and to KDI—

that these youth had to be empowered to secure the

construction work and the site’s surroundings, and to

address the underlying issues facing the youth.

It took more than two years for Usalama to establish

themselves in 2012 as a cohesive youth group with aspi-

rations to change their livelihoods and environment. At

that time, KDI began partnering with the young people

in order to respond to their specific needs and ensure

their support, by promising technical support for income-

generating activities. The development of Usalama as a

group faced and had to address some real challenges,

including: competing priorities among members, a lack

of group structure, and the need for stronger leader-

ship. Now, after more than two years, the group has

managed to maintain a core membership of 20 young

people from two villages.

Group cohesion and trust was enhanced through the

start of a savings and loan activity among the group

members. This savings and loan activity started in Sep-

tember 2013 and lasted for 6 months. Usalama mem-

bers met every Sunday; each member was required to

contribute 50 Ksh (approximately US$.50) to the pro-

ject. Each week, a portion of that money—between 500

and 3000Ksh, approximately US$5 to $30—was lent

to one of the members to develop one activity, pay a

bill, or enhance his business. This activity enhanced the

trust among group members, and reinforced the overall

strength of the group, as they worked together to man-

age a revolving fund. The group was later able to open

a bank account to secure the saved money (42,000Ksh,

approximately $420).

The success of the activity encouraged Usalama mem-

bers to maintain their table banking activity, but they

also decided that they wanted to do something produc-

tive with the funds accumulated to date. When they tried

to identify practical ideas and reach consensus on the

direction to take, however, they struggled as a group.

To address this new challenge, KDI introduced the group

to UN-Habitat’s Urban Youth Fund project design tools.

GROWING THE PROJECT USING THE UYF TOOLS

Within any group—even one with a strong core and a

history of success—diverse interests, visions, and per-

sonalities can make it challenging to develop a common

goal and project design. Research from the Global Youth-

Led Development Report Series7 found that “…while

program content is typically strong and well conceptu-

alized, and while youth are often playing instrumental

roles in the implementation of these programs, the or-

ganizations are often lacking in some aspect of structure

or operations.” Furthermore, this research found that

specific tools such as strategic and operational planning

and financial management tools, in particular, were ar-

eas where youth-led initiatives needed and wanted sup-

port. The Urban Youth Fund aimed to address that lack

by creating youth-friendly tools for project development.

When KDI and Usalama turned to the UN-Habitat’s Ur-

ban Youth Fund project design process, they discovered

the tools that could help their group develop a shared

vision and detail the steps needed to design the project.

7 MacNeil, C., Ragan, D., and Solberg, J.A. (2012). State of the Field in Youth-Led Develop-ment. (Vol. II of the Global Youth-Led Development Series). Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat).

They were able to use these tools to support the imple-

mentation of their project, regardless of whether or not

the group received a grant from the UYF.

First and foremost, Usalama members needed to define

their vision and theory of change. They all agreed on the

need to use their own positive influence to empower

additional youth and prevent them from engaging in

criminal activities. To do so, they decided to address

the unemployment issue in Kibera by creating income-

generating activities for young people. They also real-

ized that they would need to engage with the surround-

ing community, in order to build trust between youth

and other inhabitants, and reinforce the social cohesion

needed for the success of the project. As the project de-

velopment process continued, they realized that young

people in Kibera were undertaking many recycling activi-

ties and that there was a crucial need for coordinating

these activities so as to make them more profitable for

the youth while simultaneously improving the service to

the community.

The Urban Youth Fund’s project development tool is

designed to help youth groups think through a project

step-by-step. Although the Usalama members had in

mind a rough idea of what activities would be conduct-

ed, they struggled putting them in order and linking

them to, outcomes, and budget. By using the tool, they

were able to transform their vision into a practical goal

with “activities,” “outputs,” and “outcomes” and then

to prioritize and schedule their activities.

In addition, the UYF tool helps groups to do reflection

and planning on potential risks to the project, and on

partnerships that can be developed to build success. By

guiding the participants through a risk assessment pro-

cess, the tool helped the participants refine their project

to mitigate against those potential risks throughout the

implementation process. One concrete example had to

do with the dumping of the garbage that youth would

collect. The environment in Kibera would only be im-

proved when the garbage collected was trucked out of

Kibera to a proper dumping site. However the youth

feared that those hired to collect the garbage bags

would dump them somewhere else in the slum in order

to avoid paying for the truck. To address this, they decid-

ed that one Usalama member would assume the respon-

sibility of following up the collection process every week

to make sure that the garbage was being sent to an of-

ficial dumping site outside of the slum. By reflecting on

these (and other) risks in advance, the group was able to

create a process to prevent them from happening.

The portion of the tool that addresses partnerships was

also helpful to the group as they reflected on the other

youth groups, CBOs, and NGOs within Kibera, the ways

that they could connect to these groups, and the role

these groups might play in relationship to their specific

project. The connections helped them to secure external

support to implement their project, while also coordinat-

ing trash collection throughout Kibera.

In short, while the group had the vision and determina-

tion to develop and implement their project to improve

their local community, they needed some additional skills

and tools to give it the structure and cohesion it lacked.

Usalama was able to use the UYF tools to support their

efforts by identifying and preventing risks, planning ac-

tivities in detail, and building partnerships that would

enhance their success.

STAYING YOUTH-LED AND YOUTH-CENTERED

The story of Usalama is the story of a successful col-

laboration between this youth group and a partnering

organization, KDI. Such collaborations, though filled

with potential, also face challenges in remaining youth-

led and youth-centered. Ensuring that a project is actu-

ally designed and implemented by the youth themselves

is critical to its success. A partnering organization must

engage with the youth group in a careful and respectful

way, and avoid taking over the goal or direction of the

project.

KDI used the strategy of participatory workshops to en-

sure that the Usalama project remained youth-centered.

The workshops were held on a weekly basis over six

weeks, and were structured in a way to ensure that

youth’s ideas were not unduly influenced by either KDI or

other visiting NGOs. In addition, KDI gave weekly assign-

ments for the group members to meet separately and

answer specific questions. These separate discussions,

away from KDI, allowed the youth to rethink their ideas

and then present them later during the KDI workshops.

Usalama also strengthened their own youth participation

through the internal communication rules they had es-

tablished prior to their partnership with KDI. These rules

ensured that each person had a voice in every meeting,

and emphasized that every member had the right to ex-

press ideas and to be respected by other members. By

continuing to use these rules, Usalama could ensure that

each and every individual youth had the opportunity to

shape the development of the project, by bringing new

ideas or expressing disagreement, and thereby foster

youths’ sense of ownership of both the process and the

project.

By paying careful attention to group process and par-

ticipation, Usalama members could develop consensus

around the project’s vision and implementation, and the

partnership between KDI and Usalama remained youth-

centered and youth-directed.

LESSONS FOR OTHER YOUTH GROUPS

The story of Usalama’s youth-led development project,

and their partnership with KDI, contains important les-

sons for other youth groups who might be involved in

YLD projects.

First, youth-led development is strengthened by partners

who create supportive structures and processes, but do

not try to control the project direction or implementa-

tion. In the case of Usalama, KDI intervened to start

building relationships with the youth who were causing

troubles around the construction site in the first place,

and those youth became the project’s eventual partici-

pants. They also intervened when they saw the need for

project planning support, and guided the group toward

tools (the UYF’s project planning tools) that would help

them in their efforts. Yet, KDI limited its intervention to

allow Usalama to form its own group, and to develop

and organize the group under its own leadership. In

youth-led development, participatory processes are criti-

cal for success. Youth participants must feel that they

have a voice in decision-making and that the project

reflects their vision, ideas and efforts. Youths’ sense of

efficacy, a characteristic of YLD, is developed through

this participation, when youth have the opportunity to

express their ideas and to contribute in meaningful ways

to the success of the project.

Second, while youth-led development is inherently a

participatory process, successful implementation still

requires leadership. KDI partnered with Usalama mem-

bers individually for more than two years, but the actual

formation, structure, and activities of the group were

led from within the group itself. Within Usalama, youth

leaders emerged who felt a conviction for the impor-

tance of the work, and who demonstrated the ability

to guide others to join them in that work. This internal

leadership is essential for the relevance of the project,

and critical to its sustainability. This is also key to why

UN-Habitat´s main approach to youth-led development

includes partnering with youth-led groups rather than

individuals. A youth-led group ensures a higher degree

of sustainability and impact in its community.

Third, youth-led development takes a significant invest-

ment of time and can take more time than processes

implemented as a top-down approach from an estab-

lished organization but will be more sustainable and

more inclusive than top-down processes. The process

of youth led-development is about changing the way

youth perceive their environment and their place in it.

It is about developing an understanding of the oppor-

tunities that do or might exist, and coming to a realiza-

tion that each individual can play a role in shaping those

opportunities—that is, developing a sense of agency.

These developmental processes take time. Likewise, the

relationships needed to sustain such efforts can only be

built over time. The relationship between KDI and Us-

alama evolved into a successful relationship over several

years and only with a significant investment of time and

effort.

Fourth, that sense of agency, to be effective, requires

certain skills and knowledge. Without these skills and

knowledge, the efforts of youth may be ineffective, and

ultimately have a negative impact on youth’ sense of

agency. Youth leaders and participants in Usalama were

able to strengthen their skills and knowledge in project

management by using the project development tools of

the Urban Youth Fund. The tools, in combination with

the investment of time and energy of the collaborating

partner, allowed the group to create a successful project

while enhancing the sense of agency among partici-

pants.8

The story of Usalama, their successful collaboration with

KDI, and the ultimate success they’ve experienced in the

challenging context of Kibera, points to the potential of

such partnerships and even more importantly, to the po-

tential of youth-led development to solve some of urban

communities’ most pressing problems. While this is only

8 In order to provide more youth leaders with similar opportunities, the Youth Fund has developed an e-learning program that gives youth access to project development and management tools. From the fall 2015, the Youth Fund e-learning program offers 8 courses in social and business enterprises for youth-led organizations and dedicated youth.

one specific case, the lessons learned contribute to our

understanding of what youth can do to change their

environments, and what support they need to engage

in such an effort.

Lessons learned:

1. Youth-led development is strengthened by partners who create supportive structures and processes, but do not try to con-trol the project direction or imple-mentation.

2. While youth-led development is inherently a participatory process, successful implementation still requires leadership.

3. Youth-led development can take more time.

4. “Agency,” to be effective, re-quires certain skills and knowl-edge

United Nations Human Settlements Programme

P.O.Box 30030, 00100 Nairobi GPO Kenya

Tel: +254 20 762 3120 (Central Office)

Fax: +254 20 762 3477

www.unhabitat.org/urbanyouthfund