Kenyan Slum Youth Group Wins 2009 ONE Africa Award

A community organization founded by young people in Nairobi’s slums has won the ONE Africa Award, an annual prize given by the global anti-poverty group to honor ground-breaking work by African non-governmental organizations.

SIDAREC (the Slums Information Development and Resources Centres) have been awarded the prize of $100,000 for their work engaging and empowering disadvantaged youth in the urban slums of Kenya’s capital and actively preventing violence.

The group’s initiatives include the “Slums News” newspaper, the “Ghetto FM” community radio station and a community training center. Their members also use the arts - drama, puppetry, poetry and dance - to provoke discussion of contentious issues, particularly among members of different ethnic communities. The slums where SIDAREC’s work began were not affected by the violence that rocked much of the country after the 2007 elections.

“SIDAREC were selected for this award because they have pioneered innovative ways of engaging disaffected youth in urban slums, giving them the tools to be part of the solution to the poverty and deprivation they face,” said ONE’s Africa Outreach Manager Edith Jibunoh.

“The group’s founders realize that Africa’s greatest resource is its youth, so they are tapping into the enormous potential that exists among Kenya’s young people to shape the next generation of home grown community leaders and activists holding their own leaders to account.” 

SIDAREC started life as a youth group in 1996. The group’s work in the Nairobi slum areas of Pumwani and Mukuru Kwa Njenga has now been extended to Kibera, the vast slum that is home to more than a million people and bore much of the brunt of the post-election chaos. Citizens of these deprived areas have been provided with much needed community health services, community libraries and internet connections as well as media and arts projects. 

Through a SIDAREC entrepreneurship program many people in the slums, especially youth and women, have benefited from support to launch businesses - including a former criminal group that decided to ‘go straight’ and build a housing project and community toilet with SIDAREC training and startup funding.

The award was announced at the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Forum in Dar es Salaam Nov. 15, where over 1,000 attendees discussed issues key to Africa’s future progress.

The 2009 ONE Africa Award is the second annual award since the initiative was launched last year. It aims to recognize outstanding contributions by Africans to help advance one or more of the Millennium Development Goals. These goals address several critical issues to development, such as halving extreme poverty, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and malaria and providing universal primary education.