National Youth Summit For Developing A Youth Manifesto 2022 | Magnifying The Visibility Of Youth Leaders.

The Youth Summit on Magnifying the Visibility of Youth Leaders was a unique in-person event designed by young people for young people. The summit was convened by the International Republican Institute and The Youth Café and organized with strategic partners, including 254 Youth Policy Café, The Global Development Incubator, and The Global Opportunity Youth Network support. The summit convened 40 youth, including youth political aspirants and civil society representatives with diverse sectoral knowledge on policy issues and priorities for the Kenyan youth. The three-day summit called on young people from all over Kenya to discuss the needs of youth that will integrate into the Kenya Youth Manifesto 2022. 

Broadly, the youth summit sought to enhance the capacity of youth leaders to influence the forthcoming general elections scheduled for August 2022. In pursuit of this goal, the youth summit aims to build the capacity of young Kenyan leaders on the public policy-making process, existing policy documents, human-centered design approaches, deliberative democracy, community engagement, effective networking, and advocacy in youth-led climate change action and solutions and gender-responsive policy-making. 

The summit also objectified to profile lessons from the development and actualization of the Kenya Youth Manifesto 2017, specifically successes, challenges, and areas of improvement, and identify themes relating to the challenges of Kenyan youth and potential solutions to these needs through a human-centered design for integration into the Kenya Youth Manifesto 2022.

The discussions at the Kenya National Youth Summit were structured across the following themes: Public Policy Making Process, where the summit participants were taken through the five distinct phases of the public policy-making process; problem identification, agenda-setting, policy design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. A greater emphasis was made on the alignment of the Kenya Youth Manifesto 2022 with the Kenya Youth Development Policy 2019, Medium Term Plan (MTP) 4 under the Kenya Vision 2030, and Kenya National Climate Change Response Strategy to ensure the recommendations taps into existing policy and legislation. 

The other theme was a human-centered approach through which the participants explored creative and participatory ways to solve problems through human-centered approaches to development. In brief, the participants adopted the approach of understanding the target audience, their needs, challenges, and assumptions. The participants discussed innovative prototypes and tests that develop the "problem statements" and "recommendations" sections of the Kenya Youth Manifesto 2022. 

The summit format was designed to appeal to a multidisciplinary audience's interests and maximize the interaction of participants and networking. The summit utilized an experience-based approach with practical examples of applying concepts learned. Among the tools used to meet the summit objectives were; Plenary Sessions with the various group teams presenting key issues drawn from the group discussions highlighted to the plenary for further input and feedback.  

Group Discussions allowed interaction between summit participants and facilitators of various sessions. The participants discussed multiple personas based on the four distinct groups based on age (i.e., 15-18years, 19-24years, 25-29years, and 30-35years) in a Persona Creation Exercises and filled in a Persona template. The participants created their personas based on a template that highlighted the practical needs of a target voter, removing all preconceived biases of a target audience. They then presented their completed personas to the rest of the participants in the main plenary session for additional comments and feedback. This information will be leveraged to populate various sub-sections of the Kenya Youth Manifesto 2022. 

Other tools used during the summit were Keynote addresses with various keynote speakers invited to address areas that would enhance the skills of the Kenyan youth to gain influence in civic and political leadership and influence the forthcoming general elections. 

The summit began with Opening Remarks by Yomi Jacobs - Resident Program Director, International Republican Institute. The participants had an opportunity to listen to the keynote address from various expert speakers on various topics: Waithera Gaitho from KEPSA made a keynote address emphasizing the value chain in Agribusiness. She gave a situational analysis of youth unemployment in the public and private sector, labor market gaps, and an upcoming forum by KEPSA in Youth in Enterprise.   

Denmark Embassy Youth Sounding Board representative Richard Wambua addressed issues on Climate Change. He emphasized that 30% of the European Union budget is skewed towards climate initiatives and encouraged young people to take advantage of such initiatives for funding. IEBC Youth Coordinating Committee representative Hesbone Ndu'ngu talked about the process and roles of the IEBC, electoral code, and different initiatives by IEBC in involving young people in the entire electoral process.

Samantha Luseno of 254 Youth Policy Café took the participants through the five distinct phases of the Public Policy Making Process; problem identification, agenda-setting, policy design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation with a greater emphasis made on the alignment of the Kenya Youth Manifesto 2022 with the Kenya Youth Development Policy 2019, Medium Term Plan (MTP) 4 under the Kenya Vision 2030, and Kenya National Climate Change Response Strategy. This was an interactive session with participants to ask further questions and get responses.

The participants were also taken through the tentative KYM 2022 by Eric Mokebo of The Youth Café and Stella Mutuku of 254 Youth Policy Café. The participants gave valuable perspectives, feedback, and inputs into the proposed KYM 2022 outline, and all summit participants agreed on a final outline.

The Fellows were introduced to Persona creation by Stanley Gichobi of The Global Opportunity Youth Network. The participants were able to develop personas based on the four distinct age categories given. The personas were presented to the plenary for further input and feedback from the entire participants.

The second day saw the Fellows in Focused Group Discussions, a key tool in establishing areas that cut across all eight regions and can integrate into the Kenya Youth Manifesto 2022. The sessions were moderated by Stella Mutuku of 254 Youth Policy Café and James Ndungu of The Global Development Incubator. Three critical issues emanated from the interactive sessions. First is economic issues that directly impact the youth's ability to generate and benefit from income-generating streams. The common underlying concerns were unemployment, lack of financing (capital), lack of market for agricultural products, unexploited natural resources, poor infrastructure, skills mismatch, lack of value addition, and corruption.

Secondly were Social issues, which were recognized as pertinent issues preventing societies from working at an optimal level. Common social problems included inadequate learning institutions (Schools), inadequate health services, mental health issues, harmful cultural practices, gender-based violence, child pregnancies and early child marriage, and environmental degradation.

Thirdly, political issues illuminated the common barriers to youth involvement in politics. The issues include the non-inclusivity of youth in political decision-making, lack of resources for political activities, negotiated democracies, lack of access to information, commercialization of politics, and corruption.

Several issues from the group presentations emerged as cross-cutting in all eight regions, while others were specific to each of the regions. The cross-cutting issues are categorized below based on the three categories (economic, social, and political) identified.

Cross-cutting issues under economic pillars are unemployment, lack of capital or finances, lack of markets for agricultural products, exploitation of local/natural resources, poor infrastructure, skills mismatch versus job opportunities, lack of value addition, and corruption. Cross-Cutting issues identified under the social pillar were inadequate schools/learning institutions, inadequate health service/poor health services, mental health issues, gender-based violence/child pregnancies/child marriages, harmful cultural practices, and environmental degradation. Political issues that were cross-cutting were non-Inclusivity of youth in political decision making, lack of enough resources for political activities, negotiated democracies, lack of access to information/information dissemination, commercialization of politics, and corruption.

The recommendations to magnify the visibility of youth in leadership included empowering youth to run for office and win, after that push for policies that offer solutions, capacity building on political processes, enhanced civic awareness, institutionalize affirmative action policies for youth, empower youth to have the capacity and passion for participating in political processes and assume political positions, provide waivers on fees that youth pay while contesting for elective office and offer resources to youth vying for leadership positions within the community.   

On the third day, the participants held discussions in 4 groups. They came up with agreed strategies to engage the youth and various collaborators in civic education to magnify the visibility of the youth. Key strategies to reach the youth included youth barazas and bunges (Spearheaded by political aspirants in collaboration with youth groups), media (National and Local TV and radio stations), social media (Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, WhatsApp groups and bloggers), Concerts, sports and cultural festivals, roadshows, and caravans, door to door sensitization, friendly religious organizations, sporting activities (organizing tournaments to attract youth masses to sensitize them on the manifestos), campaign trail (educate the youth while on campaign trail partnering with political parties and key players), creating youth manifesto ambassadors (use celebrities that youth can relate with), translation of the manifesto into a language easily understood by the youth and involving youth volunteers.

To solidify this manifesto, the participants identified the national government, county government, and political aspirants as the key players for the adoption and accountability of the manifesto. 

The steps to adopt the context-specific priority issues were listed as Political parties sign the manifesto led by presidential candidates. County-level commitment by the aspiring county governors. The youth manifesto to influence the County Integrated Development Plans (CIDP), County Youth Development Policies, and annual plans; Civil societies to hold accountable the government on the same; Youth leaders to undertake grassroots level sensitization of the priority issues identified in the manifesto; Youth Leaders as "Watchdog" for the manifesto at both National and County levels; NYC to adopt and hold other organizations accountable; Notable youth leaders to hold and lead regional forums for sensitization and awareness; Have the aspirants domesticate the manifesto; Engagement of key stakeholders including the civil society as advocates for the priority issue adoption; Engagement of the private sector as a key player in addressing specific priority issues in the manifesto; Manifesto technical team to design a monitoring and evaluation framework for the manifesto to track the impact between 2022 and 2027.

The emerging issues that arose as factors to dissemination and localization of the manifesto were Picking youth manifesto ambassadors, translating the document into various languages as popular versions, finding out how to include youth at county levels, finding out what happens after the adoption of the manifesto to ensure youth are engaged, make sure all aspirants to buy into manifestos, introduce campus caravans.

A zero draft of the KYM 2022 manifesto with inputs from the participants for the three days was presented to the plenary as captured by the secretariat by Bonface Munene from the 254 Youth Policy Café. The input into the manifesto included the persona templates discussed at group levels, the key issues and recommendations identified under economic, social, and political areas during the focused group discussions, dissemination and localization of the manifesto, adoption, accountability, and collaborators.

The Kenya Youth Manifesto secretariat will hold regional consultation seeking grassroots-level input from youth who are not engaged in the political process to ensure that the priority issues are captured comprehensively. In addition, the secretariat will conduct Key Informant Interviews to address information gaps, particularly on the policy recommendations on the policy issues. A technical team will then be convened to develop the Kenya Youth Manifesto 2022 document, building its content from existing literature aligning the manifesto to existing policies and legal instruments. The reviewed manifesto will then be randomly presented to a youth jury to critique the document. After that, the manifesto will be launched and presented for sign-off by the presidential contenders and aspirant governors and Members of Parliament before dissemination and localization.

The Youth Café works with young men and women around Africa as a trailblazer in advancing youth-led approaches toward achieving sustainable development, social equity, innovative solutions, community resilience, and transformative change.

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