Outreach and visibility for
stakeholder support
Keywords: government, coordination, corruption,
miscommunication, grassroots, Kenya, small NGO
In Kibera, an urban slum of Nairobi in Kenya, 250,000
people are packed into just 3.2 square kms. They live in
a maze of shanties and open sewage ditches. Almost
all public infrastructure is lacking. Schools are mostly
informal, hygiene is extremely difficult to maintain,
disease is everywhere and toilets are scarce.
In 2008, Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) constructed
the first playground in the slum and built a fourclassroom primary school. They used a grassroots
approach to community engagement. Through
community forums and an open application process,
they determined what public infrastructure would
help the community most. Applications asked the
community to identify their needs and capacities,
to pose solutions, and to propose a financial plan
to sustain their solutions. KDI then conducted widereaching interviews. They determined whether the
community could follow through and established a site.
When the community first identified a potential site for
the primary school and playground, it was a marsh of
trash, debris and raw sewage. By diverting the water
flow and adding soil, the team reclaimed the area and
built classroom structures and a playground. Heavy
rains still brought some floodwater, but the majority
of the site had become an open green space for
children and the public. KDI’s philosophy was that the
community was the project owner, so they never placed
their name on the site.
Six years later, community members and KDI reunited
to construct toilets on the school grounds but stopped
just after laying the footing. Rumours emerged that a
government-sanctioned ‘chief camp’ was planned for
the same site as the new toilets. In Kibera, chiefs liaise
between the formal government offices and Kibera
residents, holding their meetings in these offices or camps.
The importance of visibility
KDI came to realise the importance of high-profile
visibility and broad outreach. KDI had believed that the
immediate neighbourhood was the sole owner of the
project and had never locally broadcast their name.
High-level government offices did not necessarily
know or respect their work, and when the Member of
Parliament learnt of the project it was too late. KDI did
not have visibility and clout inside or outside the slum to
stop government plans.
They changed course. They posted information boards
outside each potentially threatened construction site
showing before and after pictures, a list of the people
working on the project, the duration of their work, a
description of the site boundaries and the community’s
vision for the site. The NGO also worked to appear in
local media, newspapers and magazines. They started
tweeting in the local dialect, and they spoke at public
events.
SECTION III: MOBILISATION
IN CONTEXT
The next morning, KDI and community members
watched as hired, machete-armed youths built a fence
to delineate the new government project. The land they
had taken included the existing playground and the
footing excavations for the sanitation block. The team
was able to salvage their unused materials, but they
had to restart the design process on a neighbouring
site. One week later, the old playground was razed.
By increasing their visibility and communicating their
work and its benefits, KDI increased the political
sustainability of their projects while maintaining their
community-owned model.
Key takeaways
• Increased project visibility can create future partners.
• Even though community ownership is paramount,
the wider community must know and respect the
work of implementing agencies to maintain effective
relationships.
KDI held meetings up the chain of command, starting
with the local Chief and elders, the regional planning
office, the government development fund, and finally
the representing Member of Parliament.
After learning of KDI’s work and the history of the
project, the Member of Parliament asked everyone to
stop work. KDI recommended that the chief camp and
the toilets be built in parallel rather than opposition. The
Member of Parliament agreed to work with KDI. Yet it
soon became clear that the original plan was moving
forward without KDI collaboration.
KDI worked with residents of a slum neighbourhood outside
Nairobi to build a playground and school.
Photo: Charles Mwendo Newman/KDI.
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