A report dubbed ‘Impact study on Place-Based Leadership Development for Intersectoral Urban Violence Prevention’ with focus on prevention of urban violence in low income areas of Naivasha and Nakuru West sub counties has been launched in Nakuru.
The report has is a culmination of an intersectoral urban violence prevention project implemented by Nakuru based MIDRIFT-Human Rights Network.
The report recommends among other things the expansion of the program to engage more people across agencies and sectors in Nakuru and Naivasha.
It also recommends the need for capacity building across partners in relation to violence and gender issues, increasing awareness and understanding with a view to influencing and increasing resources available to support violence prevention activity and rehabilitation of offenders.
Further, the report recommends further mobilization of community-organized groups to provide linkages between agencies and wider communities at the grassroot level considering ways to break down barriers such as language and physical access to services.
Speaking during the launch of the report, MIDRIFT Hurinet’s Deputy Executive Director Bernard Githae said after launching the report they will be engaging the leaders from various sectors with an aim of ensuring that the knowledge they have gained through will be disseminated to others.
This, he says will lead to a collective action that will eventually lead to a collective impact I terms of violence prevention for the next 4 years.
“Going forward we are engaged in further development of these leaders to spread the knowledge they have to others within their working areas.
This will lead to a collective action that will eventually bring a collective impact on prevention of urban violence” said Githae.
The process will run through 2020/2023 even as Kenya expects to have general elections in 2022 and with the BBI rallies raising the political temperatures in the country.
But according to Githae, if there shall be a collective action across agencies as per the recommendation of the report then there shall be a collective impact that will see violence-free elections in the country.
“The main objective is to ensure that we have collective action from all the sectors. In terms of preparedness towards 2022 elections we have programmed mechanisms targeting the leaders in various sectors” said Githae.
Similar sentiment echoed by MIDIRFT Hurinet CEO Joseph Omondi who called on the leaders form the various sectors to be ambassadors of the knowledge they have gained throughout the project.
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