Anika Talent Show: Empowering Kenya's Youth for Environmental Education
Visual artists, dancers, poets, thespians, and vocalists between the ages of 14 and 25 were brought together in a lively event in Kenya promoting green skills and environmental justice, aligning with the International Youth Day 2023 theme.
This event was made possible by Nicholas Songora, 2021 Goldin Global Fellow from Kenya and Founding Director Manyatta Youth Entertainment, and his dedicated team behind organizing the Anika Talent Show in celebrating International Youth Day in Partnership with the Forum civ Eastern and Southern Africa hub under the Wajibu Wetu; Jumuika Sikika Program with collaboration from the private sector, religious leaders, persons with disabilities leadership, national and county governments.
Nicholas speaks more to the Goldin Institute about this activity and why it represents a movement that harnesses the power of art to drive change.
He believes that people together can create a sustainable world where everyone, through artivism, contributes to a brighter future. Already, he is leaving his mark on infusing positive change and possibilities among young people.
Nurturing the Youth as Change Agents for Environmental Issues
This gathering equipped young people with green skills and a profound understanding of environmental justice while utilizing the transformative potential of arts to foster sustainability in society.
Nicholas delves into how they incorporated sustainability and environmental justice in this event.
“The activity involved performances like dance and music that narrated stories of environmental struggles, resilience, and hope. These performances fostered empathy, understanding, and a sense of responsibility toward the planet. This was a powerful medium to raise awareness about environmental challenges.” - Nicholas Songora
He highlights that photographers pledged to vividly portray environmental issues, ecological beauty, and the consequences of unsustainable practices through art exhibitions.
From the interactive discussion, participants, including village elders, engaged in addressing climate change challenges. They shared personal experiences and ideas for climate action, including sustainable agriculture, waste management, and energy conservation.
Strengthening Community Work through Networking
Further, he expresses his gratitude to several collaborative partners who contributed to the success of the Anika Talent Show.
“As an organization, we prioritize a multi-sectorial approach in programs and project management. According to our strategic focus, one of our critical mandates is to create linkages and alliances with other like-minded organizations and institutions.”
Therefore, Nicholas adds building partnerships and collaborations places the organization at the center of decision-making tables at the county, regional, and national levels.
“This has fostered community ownership and has enhanced sustainability. We collaborate closely with the national and county governments, the private sector, and religious institutions. Also, we collaborate with youth, women, and persons with disabilities networks while forming part of the civil society leadership in Kenya's Coastal region.”
He sees collaboration as fostering cost efficiency and effectiveness, sustainability, and long-term impact accepted by the masses.
The Lasting Impact of the Goldin Institute Fellowship and Looking Forward
Nicholas acknowledges that he applied the key strategies learned from the Goldin Global Fellowship, from planning to executing the Anika Talent Show.
“Through design, we applied the concept of community asset mapping, which we learned during the Goldin Global Fellowship. In this step, we reflected on the available stakeholders at the grassroots and national levels.”
Further, he elaborates on how they divided into mapping the available resources and funding to support the initiative.
“Identifying potential collaborators was easy, including nominating young people to lead in the activity. Mapping of potential artists within the Anika Community Hub and inviting more from the community.”
Conclusively, drawing from his experience, Nicholas shares his advice with aspiring young people and how they can play a proactive role in their communities.
“The #YouthTribe is a powerful family with all it takes to change the existing narrative and achieve a green economy as a global identity.” he says.
“In most countries, youth form the largest percentage of the population; for example, in my country, Kenya, we are approximately 80% of the population but cannot make a difference if we keep working in isolation. We must unify our voices, be counted, and influence our way to the decision-making table through dialogue and collaboration.”
He draws our attention to the fact that youth cannot win by competing or fighting other stakeholders but by embracing the unity of purpose and fostering collaboration.
Nicholas calls youth to “rise and start building partnerships and networks with multi-stakeholders.”
Promoting Peace Through the Arts in Mombasa
By Nicholas Songora Odoll, 2021 Goldin Global Fellow, Kenya
Manyatta Youth Entertainment (MAYE) is a community based organization active in the coastal counties of Kenya, which uses arts, sports and media to promote social change. Our team is led by youth for the youth and we are grounded in human rights principles. We have been involved in the areas of social accountability, civic education, and social justice using creative arts, innovation, and technology as a mode of communication while providing alternative livelihood and economic empowerment to young men and women. We are also active in addressing concerns revolving around gender-based violence, violent extremism, and armed juvenile crime.
In the first quarter of the year 2022, our team at Manyatta Youth Entertainment focused on expanding collaborations with like-minded organizations, strengthening our center’s library and capacitating our team. In February 2022, we hosted a delegation of development partners led by the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund-GCERF, Act Kenya, and the Coast Interfaith Council of Clerics Trust-CICC. Partners learned about our work and participated in the ongoing entertainment and dialogue activities which were happening at the center. In March, a team from Segal Family Foundation (SFF) visited us to learn about our programs and see the youth friendly space (Anika Community Hub). This month, April 2022, we were honored by a visit from the Ministry of Interior led by the Regional, County, and the Deputy county Commissioners. Along with this delegation, we got the chance to join meetings with the Kenya ports authority officials in discussions about the Dongo Kundu area free economic zone.
Our team learned as much as the visitors learned from us, it was an equal exchange of knowledge, experiences, and ideas for possible collaborations. We are grateful for these connection opportunities and are committed to partnerships in building peace. Our team continues to look forward to forming a sustainable working relationship with other like-minded organizations.
In March one of our partners, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO), donated books to Anika Community Hub. The support furnished our small library with a whole new variety of readings for our youth. Our library fulfills the commitment to article 35 of our national constitution on the right to access of information. Young men and women can now visit our center to learn and grow from the wisdom contained in the books found at our library. In the same month, we organized a 3-day training on Human-Centered Design with the support from the Aga Khan Foundation. The training involved young mentors and grassroot facilitators who work with us and the Likoni Community Development Programme - Licodep who form part of our CSOs network members. After the training, youth involved worked closely with children (10 to 16 years), their teachers and parents in designing a solution for identified problems that affect students' academic performances.
Lastly, as our country is gearing up towards the national elections next year, we joined hands with all the Civil Society Organizations along the coast to lead the process of issuing a joint press statement over the emerging insecurity concerns ahead of the elections. Joined by the network members, I issued the press statement on 7th April at Uhuru Gardens in Mombasa. You can read the full statement and/or watch us reading the statement through our YouTube Channel.
As this quarter closes, we are excited about the work and new collaborations we are going to realize in the next quarter of the year. We sincerely appreciate the support of ForumCiv Hub Eastern & Southern Africa, Embassy of Sweden in Nairobi, Coast Interfaith Council of Clerics Trust Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund, Accountability Lab, and the Goldin Institute for the technical support that has in one way or another seen the space sustainable and open to young people.
Illuminating Perspectives: Art and Social Justice
When artist and educator Cecil McDonald Jr. began working with children in the Chicago Public Schools some years ago, he heard something that disturbed him. The children were enjoying themselves in the playground and appeared to be carefree, but when Cecil interviewed them, he heard them “repeating the grand narratives of violence and pain,” a narrative that was created by adults and taught to them through the media they consumed.
He resolved to do something about it by creating images that find dignity and beauty in the everyday activities of African American families, and by empowering the youths to document their own lives through photography.
“I made that my charge,” McDonald said. “You ask them: ‘What image do you see? How do you see those images?’ And then you give them the camera so they can go out and tell their own stories.”
McDonald recently hosted the Chicago Peace Fellows at his exhibit of photographs entitled “In the Company of Black” at the Chicago Cultural Center. Containing large, posed images of African American subjects performing quotidian activities inside their homes – reading, sleeping, playing, getting ready for the day – the exhibit was created by McDonald over seven years to represent what he described as the “extraordinarily ordinary.”
[quote]“Artists are in the business of creating truth, creating magic. I depend on my ability to create to make the everyday seem extreme.” -- Cecil McDonald, Jr.[/quote]
For McDonald as for the other artists, the work had a common purpose with teachers, organizers and others working to empower communities. While artists are usually “the last ones brought in,” McDonald said artists focus people’s energy, reconstitute their self-image, and define their purpose.
McDonald was one of several artists who spoke to the Peace Fellows in an April 2nd workshop hosted by the Chicago Cultural Center entitled "Illuminating Perspectives: The Role of the Arts in Social Change." Tonika Lewis Johnson presented her Folded Map Project while artistic director Jane Saks talked about the intersections between art and social justice and the work of Project&, and Rahmaan Statik Barnes discussed his work as a street artist and muralist.
Tonika’s Folded Map Project utilizes Chicago’s long north-south streets to make visual connections between residents who live at corresponding addresses on the North and South sides of the city. She began the project as a photographic study but it proved very popular with the residents themselves, who enjoyed meeting their ‘opposite,’ and quickly gained widespread attention from mainstream media outlets so that Tonika added video and a new web site. The Folded Map Project is an investigation of urban segregation and its impacts on the people’s everyday lives.
The founding president of the Chicago-based Project&, Jane Saks has participated and led many different kinds of collaborations between artists and activists such as “Working in America,” a traveling exhibition and web archive inspired by Pulitzer Prize-winner Studs Terkel’s 1974 book “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do,” a gathering of photos and stories of working folk in 17 states.
Jane enthusiastically cited her experiences to aver that artistic collaborations are uniquely situated to function as an ‘ecology’ where issues of equality and equity can be defined and discussed.
[quote]“In an ecology, things are not equal. They’re equitable. We’re not born with equality, but we can work for equity.” -- Jane Saks[/quote]
Turning to the Peace Fellows, Jane pointed out the similarities between their work as grassroots organizers and artists.
“As community activists, as social justice leaders, what you’re working to do is what people in the arts do,” Jane said. “Social justice workers and artists are both envisioning a future and creating things into existence.”
The Peace Fellows also heard from Rahmaan Statik, a public artist, designer, fine artist, illustrator and art teacher, who described the inspirations he received growing up on the South Side surrounded by urban art and public murals. A co-founder of a graphic arts and mural collective called R.K Design, Statik has produced over 400 murals and earned commissions for Coca Cola, Toyota, the village of Rosemont, and Red Bull, among other corporate clients.
