Local Justice

Local Justice

Kenya
Kenya
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Dates: 2021 - 2022

Helping young Kenyans navigate the local justice system.

A team of qualified community mediators empower other young people as peer-peer mediators in their communities.

The justice system is often difficult for young people in Kwale to navigate. It is also bureaucratic, time consuming and costly. Compounded by limited critical conflict resolution skills, tensions between individuals and groups tend to escalate, and some even turn to violence to address perceived injustices.

Haki Mashinani (“Local Justice”), a team of qualified community mediators, wanted to empower other young people as peer-peer mediators in their communities. They offered five train-the-trainer workshops trainings for 14 local youth leaders from Tsimba-Golini ward, equipping them with knowledge of dispute resolution techniques. To support the training, the team developed a mediation manual, which was subsequently disseminated to other youth leaders to further empower them.

Empowering a Generation of Community Mediators

The 14 youth leaders trained on basic mediation were awarded certificates, ready to take up their roles as peace-keepers in the community. To sustain their project’s impact, the team forged an ongoing working relationship with the area chief who committed to being their government representative in drawing in new participants and to help support further training efforts.

Following the training, the team participated in a local radio talk show to raise awareness on the role of youth in peer-peer mediation and the resolution of community-level conflicts. The show gave the team an opportunity to interact with listeners and hear their opinions on the subject while in turn helping to drive further interest in the topic of mediation. Many of the listeners went on to reach out to the team via the project’s social pages.

Find Out More

Find out more about the impact of the project in Kwale County.

Testimonials

“The most important consideration is the role of fairness among the root causes of conflict, in order to solve it.”

Hassan Mwangare

Secretary General, Kwale Pen. People (CBO)

Get In Touch

If you would like to find out more about our impact, or would like to discuss future opportunities, we would love to hear from you.

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