Facilitators taking the participants through the validation process
The Kenya Youth Manifesto 2022 made it possible for young people's voices to be heard. This was done by opening up an opportunity for youth jurors who spent a day determining the importance of this manifesto in relation to the future Kenyan population on the 21st of April, 2022 at Golden Tulip Hotel in Westlands, Nairobi. The question throughout the day left juror hungry and anticipating - what is this country going to look like when these youngsters take over?
To legitimize the procedure of Youth Juries and justify their influence, we need to ensure that Youth Jurors are close in representation to all members of the communities. To gather evidence about what makes an accurate vote, we first thought about who ought to be eligible to cast a ballot - every person over 18 years old within Kenya, even with qualifications. But then we realized that there would also need to be a way of selecting these possible jurors randomly; so after all, considerations had been taken care of, we decided on stratified random selection. Not only did this privilege each jury member based on criteria including but not limited to school level attended or region currently residing - it also ensured universal representation. This means every person had an equal chance at becoming part of it; reducing bias as much as possible without diminishing intrinsic diversity among Africans from different backgrounds who deserve justice just like anyone else does.
“Am very excited to have been selected from Mombasa county. The event was well done and they met my expectations of the event. It was very helpful in terms of addressing the needs of the youth. Looking forward to the manifesto launch.”
By using a series of objective and unbiased techniques, we are able to maintain an equal balance between all different types of jurors.
The first step in this process was to create a list containing the names and contact information of every single applicant. From here, every time one came up who matched the criteria for the youth we would select them for the Youth Jury unless there had been too many already from that family line. Next came choosing people based on their education; at this point if someone's qualifications matched they would be added to the jury according to what type they were needed most.
In order to make sure each representation on the Kenya Youth Manifesto Validation Jury was equal when there were too many people from one education level, we would go back through the list of randomly picked candidates and replace them with someone else. By repeating this process again and again until all educational backgrounds were at an even rate, we ensured that each person who contributed to writing this manifesto would be equally represented.
Youth in a local community project in Kitui County.
The Kenya Youth Manifesto Validation Jury Selection Process was used to achieve equality on the platform and in accordance with Kenyan law, applicants were selected randomly. In cases where there was an overrepresentation of one gender within the pool, a replacement would be made using the first eligible applicant matching the same lineage and educational background for that individual but whose gender matched another region's demographic (as far as possible). This ensured equal representation of both genders during voting period. When it came time to select a diverse group - in order to prevent any young person from feeling left out of the conversation - every effort was made so that certain regions weren't given an unfair share due to geographical closeness (more than 2). Therefore, replacements would happen if necessary in case more applicants represented said region at start time due to various limitations which may create difficulties for new voters when accessing information or influencing others' opinions.
The Kenya Youth Manifesto (KYM) 2022 is a product of concerted efforts by various stakeholders, the youth, youth political, and civic leaders from different regions (8 regions) in Kenya being at the manifesto's core. The Youth Cafe, the International Republican Institute (IRI), and several stakeholders and strategic partners were instrumental in ensuring the manifesto came to fruition. The Kenya Youth Manifesto 2022 project was shepherded by The Youth Cafe (TYC-Kenya) with key stakeholders' active support and participation, including representatives of civil society, business, academia, relevant government agencies, and the media.
The Kenya Youth Manifesto (KYM) 2022 was created out of a series of discussions and consultations. The consultations began with forty (40) political and civic youth leaders drawn from across the country during the National Youth Summit 2022. The political and civic youth leaders, through a human-centered design approach, persona creation, and Focussed Group discussion (FGD), created a persona of their constituents based on the four distinct age categories given (i.e., 15-18years, 19-24years, 25-29years, and 30-35years) on a template that highlighted the practical needs of a target youth removing all preconceived bias of a target audience.
At the end of the event, the participants were invited to participate in the validation of the draft copy of The Kenya Youth Manifesto anonymously and the documentation was kept for future reference after the event and a detailed report will be written thereafter.