Makueni County is appraised, both locally and internationally, as one of the best devolved units that has enacted policies that give attention to community needs and priorities. But in practice, political influence, control by the elites, targeted mobilization, staged representation, and unwillingness of the government officials to give up control over project activities are some of the key challenges to effective public participation. Recently, there have been low turnouts of women, youth and PWDs during government organized public participations as they have realized that the government doesn’t care for their needs.

When Makueni Youth Network received KCDF’s Giving for Change (GfC) grants aimed at supporting for our project dubbed “Youth Leading Change in Enhancing Democracy and Social Accountability in Makueni County”, our push was to transition more youth, women and PWDs to become agents of change. We first mapped and trained 30 youth/women/PWDs-Led groups from the 30 wards of Makueni County to be part of our grassroots implementers. Also from the KCDF’s Giving for Change (GfC) grants that supports Makueni Community of Practice, we mapped and trained other 30 grassroots CSOs to be part of our foot soldiers.

So, whenever we see a call from the government inviting members of the public to attend public participation or requesting them to submit their proposals, we circulate such information among our grassroots partners and request those with interest to communicate back for support. Two kinds of support: (1) we either support those groups who want to convene before the day of public participation to deliberate on the best approach or develop a submission; and or (2) support with fares (20-30 members of each of the interested groups) to attend the scheduled public participation to submit the written proposals or participate meaningfully. This practice has proven to yield positive results as more informed youth, women and PWDs are now attending these public participations to submit their proposals.

A good example is recently when we saw a print notice by the government of Makueni inviting individuals and CSOs to participate in the cluster, subwards and ward elections of Development committees (between 11 Feb 2025 and 25^th Feb 2025), as usual, we notified our members prepare in advance. The idea was to support 20-30 members of each of our grassroots partners with the fares or lunch to attend and participate in the cluster elections. In each level of elections, members of the public had to contest for 11 positions: Community Resource Volunteer; Climate Change and Environment Champion; Water and Sanitation Sector Champion; Women Representative; Youth Representative female; Youth representative male; Agriculture Sector Champion; Community Health Promoter; Faith Based Organization Representative; PWD representative; Business Representative; and Road sector representative.

Despite the short notice, we saw it as a critical opportunity for Makueni Youth Network’s “Youth Leading Change” and Makueni COP. With direct support from KCDF, we convened a county-wide meeting for the 6 subcounty coordinators and 30 ward coordinators to agree on the best strategy. During the meeting, we invite the Director in charge of Makueni Public Participation, who shared with us the scope of contested positions.

RESULTS:

1. 21 grassroots partners for Makueni Youth Leading Change were able to participate and secured 74 cluster seats out of 341 seats in those 31 clusters, which translates to 32%
2. Only 9 groups for Makueni CoP were able to participate (Due to budget limits), and secured 12 positions out of 99 contested seats, thus translating to 12%

CONCLUSION:

Makueni Youth Network’s “Youth Leading Change in Enhancing Democracy and Social Accountability in Makueni County” project, which is fully financed by KCDF’ Giving for Change (GfC) grants is ultimately creating real change, where marginalized groups are not just attending public participation to coronate other members of community, but they are empowered and supported to take up leadership positions so as to be part of the key decision-makers.