Photo/Video Competition Physical Award Ceremony 

The Youth Café and its partners are currently implementing a FORD Foundation-funded project aimed at engaging the youth against corruption and closing civic space in Kenya. In this project we are working to build the power of young Kenyans to impact government policies, uphold their rights, and fight against corruption and closing civic space through transparency and accountability, deepening of media coverage and assessment of governance reforms. 

As part of the activities in this project, a photo and video competition was created where contestants between the ages of 18 and 35 were expected to represent their scenarios of corruption through the photo and video mediums. The goals of this competition were to create awareness on corruption and the closing civic space in Kenya, start conversations on corruption and ways to mitigate it, elevate the voices of the youth in the matter and use art as a creative form of mitigating corruption. 

Out of the 100,000 participants that took part in the competition, 14 finalists were shortlisted. A virtual video/photo award ceremony on the 23rd of September 2021 took place where the top three finalists were announced. These finalists were Boniface Munene, Brian Odhiambo and Damaris Aswa. 

On 30th September 2021 The Youth Café conducted the physical video/photo award ceremony at their offices at Kitisuru Gardens to officially present the winners with their awards. The event was broadcasted live on our Facebook page. Several key players attended including the 3 finalists, members of The Youth Café, invited guests Amos Onyango and Nerima Wako-Ojiwa and our keynote speaker, Mr Samuel Kimeu, the Executive Director of Africa’s Voices Foundation. 

To start off the event, the Master of Ceremony Sakina Taki, the Communications and Advocacy Volunteer at The Youth Café introduced the chief guest, herself and later invited the attendees present to introduce themselves. After the introduction Sakina gave an overview of The Youth Café; who we are, what we do about as well as our vision and mission and how The Youth Café engages the youth in Africa in making a difference in the continent.

She told the attendees to take note of the set of principles that The Youth Café’s work is underpinned by, which are; to build a more relevant, sustainable and effective enabling environment for education and work systems for youths who recognize their rights and wills, to involve the youth at all decision making processes that will affect their life, partner with youth to build a better more resilient world for all generations and frame youths programs on a gender responsive and rights based approach considering youths as right holders. She highlighted The Youth Café does this by fostering community resilience, proposing innovative solutions, driving social progress, youth empowerment and inspiring political change in Africa. 

After the introduction Sakina invited our Research and Project Management Officer, Synthia Ontita to give a brief overview of the current project. Synthia highlighted that engaging youth in the fight against corruption and closing civic space was a 2-year project funded by the Ford Foundation. She stated that The Youth Café in collaboration with Open Governance Institute and People Powered, aim to build the power of young Kenyans to impact government policies, uphold their rights, and fight against corruption and the closing civic space, by strengthening evidence-based advocacy for accountability, critical thinking and media skills, and collaboration among state and youth organizations.

She elaborated that the organization is looking at 4 interventions to make this possible, these are: 

• A lockdown live series of webinars aimed at strengthening engagement with young people and amplifying their voices and actions in supporting the expansion of civil space and advancing civic engagement. 

• Developing clear county transparency and accountability ratings, using data from audit reports and policy frameworks to economic empowerment programmes. This can be done through gaining access to government procedure opportunities and enterprise funds such as the ‘Uwezo Fund’. This, in turn, gives accessible accountability information and media content on policy

• Deepening media coverage of government devolution and public finance management issues affecting young people. This can further be enhanced by the adoption of critical thinking of young people, increased access to media opportunities through secure digital platforms and innovations.

• Accessing the state of coalition and potential of governance reform in organizations looking at state and non-state actors working together to synthesize available resources for greater impact on county transparency initiatives.

After elaborating the four interventions, Synhtia finalized her speech by taking the audience through the different steps that The Youth Café took to identify the top three winners.

The next speaker to be introduced by Sakina was Amos Onyango, a community activist and the Project Manager of PLO Lumumba Foundation. He started his speech by stating the importance of integrity among the youth and mentioned that his word of encouragement to the awardees will focus on how to be a true leader. The first point he emphasized was the main objective of a true leader is supporting the wellbeing of others.

Secondly, he stated that as a leader they should strive to inspire others in their communities. He elaborated how the main issue facing our society is the lack of ethics and that once we start having integrity in the things we do we will forever remain legends. Lastly, Amos explained how leadership is about humanity. He expounded on this point by stating that the youth need to come together and support each other towards a common goal in order to have a better society. 

Moving on, Sakina gave a brief background on the timelines of the competition. She mentioned that the entries were judged by professionals in the fields of photography, journalism, public relations as well as social leaders. Photographs were judged on relevance to the contest theme, power of the message, creativity, technical quality and suitability for presentation to an international audience. The photo and video contest reached over 500,000 young people and attracted hundreds of entries. From the entries, 14 entrants were selected to proceed to the final stage. Out of the 14 entrants 3 emerged the winners. Sakina then read the profiles of the 3 winners with a brief summary of their experience with corruption as well as their inspiration and what they would do with the award.

In 3rd place was Boniface Munene who has seen first-hand how corruption has affected the lives of youth in his community. With first-hand experience in corruption, where he was once been given a chance for a scholarship but through corruption, he was unable to grab the opportunity as he was asked for a bribe. This has fuelled his passion for change and he vowed to improve the new studio that in turn will help him create more creative Images to educate and earn a living. He would also like to venture into editorial photography and this award will really help give him a start.

In 2nd place was Brian Odhiambo who is deeply enthusiastic about eradicating corruption in Kenya and believes the right way to start recognizing heroic integrity and honest acts is to motivate clean ethical records. He also faced corruption first-hand where he was locked out of an enumerator position because he couldn't bribe my way to the job. He felt very bitter and detached from this country at that point because my dreams crashed after high expectations. He intends to invest in professional audio-visual music with lyrical content condemning corruption since he is a performing rapper. The songs would also be melodious for the likeness of those who don't pay attention to lyrics, the end result is for the songs to be catchy and educative.

Finally, our winner in 1st place was Damaris Aswa, a community integrity building ambassador, who is actively engaged in fighting corruption through behavioral change among the youth. She has successfully trained over 100 teachers and over 1500 students on community integrity building. Through her initiative, over 50 infrastructure and service projects have been successfully monitored to completion. Some stalled projects have so far been revived as these monitors hold various duty bearers accountable.

Damaris is currently training social accountability youth committees on accountability during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is keen on determining how government initiatives such as cash transfers, relief food, and the reopening of schools have been /are being conducted. She intends to use the award to fund the integrity project (SHINE) and increase the level of activity and interaction with hundreds of students on accountability. That means that increased lessons and practicals will be organized for the students to facilitate learning. The integrity clubs through the project would also be strengthened through the Award.

Sakina later on invited Damaris Aswa to come forward and give her remarks. In her opening remarks Damaris said it was a pleasure to be there standing in front of all the guests present and that she is thankful and humbled to all judges that selected her photo. After her opening remarks she gave her words of encouragement to the youths present. She elaborated how most young people fear to hold their leaders accountable but for the last two years she has been able to hold leaders accountable back at home in Kilifi.

She makes sure that any project that is launched ends up being implemented successfully and the ones that have stalled are started again for the benefit of the local community. She also talked about her mentorship and training programs that she has created in 45 secondary and primary schools through integrity clubs. She said she has also trained teachers through community integrity building models and created 24 community integrity groups in her community during the COVID-19 period.

In the integrity groups they used to take part in awareness creation of the virus. She has also taken the liberty of creating a 10 civic group in the rural areas of Kilifi. As we approach the electioneering period she believes it is important to enhance civic education and reduce voter apathy due to the high illiteracy levels in the county. To finalize her speech she thanked The Youth Café and stated as youth there is need for us to combine efforts and build synergies in the fight against corruption. 

The keynote speaker, Mr Samuel Kimeu, who is the Executive Director of Africa’s Voices Foundation, and former Executive Director of Transparency International Kenya was later invited by Sakina to give his speech. He started his speech by emphasizing that as a country we are in a critical situation when it comes to leadership but the youth hold the key to change the narrative. It does not matter where you come from, it is about the ideas you have to better people's lives.

Mr Kimeu made an appeal to The Youth Café that for change in Kenya and Africa as a whole to be realized, the youth need to look out for one another, act in support of one another and act in solidarity with one another. He stated youth is a function of passage of time, integrity is a value system therefore we have the time to look for individuals with the right track record and put them in positions where they can make the right decisions.

In his third point he congratulated the winners of the competition and stated how the world is changed by the people who take the initiative to turn up. He encouraged everyone present to be active participants and roll up their sleeves and know all the things we aspire for are within reach. 

In his final remark he told the awardees and guests present there are a lot of opportunities for the youth to participate in such competitions. It is important for us to link up with others and mobilize ourselves because “the world belongs to us” therefore we all need to play our part. He stated that the Africa’s Voices Foundation is happy to work with anyone because they want to place the voices of citizens at the center of decision making.

He elaborated that they do this through the use of mass media such as radio, where they invite citizens to come interact with leaders in the studio and ask questions and give their views. He said this breaks the barrier of marginalization of inclusion and enables anyone who receives a radio signal to get an opportunity to have their opinion heard. Mr. Kimeu’s vision for the next generation of governance in Kenya is for them to have no excuse of saying they have no way of consulting people. 

The attendees were invited to ask any questions/comments to our keynote speaker. After the question and answer session Sakina invited the last guest speaker Nerima Wako-Ojiwa, a political analyst that serves as Executive Director at Siasa Place. In her opening remarks, Mrs. Ojiwa congratulated the awardees and shared a word of encouragement to everyone on the work they do on corruption. She illustrated how fighting corruption can be very challenging and risky especially to the young generation but she said her faith is what keeps her going. She encouraged everyone to find grace that will give you sanity, meditation and balance in order to have the energy to keep going. She finished off by stating that there is a whole tribe of people fighting for people rights and therefore one would not feel alone and we should live our peace and live at peace. 

Our Executive Director Mr. Willice Onyango was later invited to give the vote of thanks. He congratulated the winners, thanked the attendees, partner organisations and individuals and gave a special thank you to the chief guest Mr. Kimeu for sharing his immense knowledge on corruption. He stated how it is important to forge allies and be able to identify people who we can work in solidarity to forge a common path. 

Finally, the winners were presented with their awards and the  event ended with a thank you to all in attendance and a group and individual photo session. 

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