Ward Resident’s Forums – Connecting Citizens & Government.

This blog post has been written by the chairperson of the Maono CBO community. 

In April, when the County government of Kilifi was preparing its Annual Development Plan (ADP), the network of CBO communities from Maono was actively involved in getting citizens to know what was in it and to get them to attend its public participation. The mobilisation covered 11 wards in Malindi and Magarini Consitutencies, reaching about 10,000 citizens.

During the outreach, residents of Malindi Ward suggested the formation of a Ward Resident’s Forum (WRF). This forum would be in charge of tracking the progress of the development priorities that they had outlined in a memorandum to the County. In addition, it would help them to quickly solve emerging issues in their communities.

We loved this idea! The forum would be a great avenue for easy flow of communications between the citizens and the county government. Citizens would use it to raise issues with the government, and for the government to disseminate information with citizens. This would ensure that, for example, important public documents like the ADP and public participation meeting announcements reach citizens on time so that they can meaningfully involve themselves.

Essentially, the community was assigning us (CBOs) the responsibility of setting up this forum. We put our heads together and executed the following plan:

Towards the end of last week, we met village elders from the entire Shella sublocation. We briefed about this initiative, the usefulness of it and their role. This forum will make sure that the views of every citizen are heard. It was a successful meeting. All the village elders agreed that this was timely because the society currently has many issues that may overwhelm one leader, but with this forum, this team, it would be easier to manage and come up with solutions. 28 village elders attended this meeting! We agreed that on the 27th of this month, they will mobilise a meeting with citizens at the sub-chief’s office to elect the ward residents representatives.

• Firstly, we settled on piloting this project in two wards, ie, Shella and Malindi Town Ward (both in Malindi Sub County). 
• The government already has direct links to communities through Ward Administrators, Chiefs, Sub-chiefs and chairpersons of village elders. They handle community level issues. As such, we decided that they were our first points of contact. We successfully sold them the idea, highlighting how the forums make their admin work easier. While engaging with them, we learnt that there was another existing forum but that had been formed exclusively by the few affluent residents of Malindi. Ward Residents Forums would be representative of everyone in the community, not just a select few.
• We formed a steering committee composed of the Ward Administrators, Chiefs, Subchiefs and chairpersons of village elders. We agreed that he WRFs would be made up of 10 people – a Village Elder, Nyumba Kumi Elder, Chief/Subchief, a religious leader, a representative of landlords, representative of youths, a representative of the business community, a representative of motoriders (boda boda), a representative of Persons Living With Disabilities and a CBO leader.
• The steering committee then set a two week target to go back to their communities to moblise village elders and brief them of this initiative. The village elders would then go to their villages, brief citizens and appoint representatives. Upon this point, the formation of the Ward Resident’s Forums would be complete. It would now set systems and processes, including mode of operation and communication.

This is a huge milestone for us! Through the forums, the community has a bigger, diverse, accurate voice. Fishermen, Women, Persons Living With Disabilities, Youths, Business people, Landlords, Farmers and every one else in the community will be represented in this platform. We are excited to continue working together to reach our ultimate goal of making sure citizens’ voices are heard and acted upon.

When we started Maono, we called it a ‘Space’ because we did not know exactly what it was. It is not your typical hub (the innovation hubs that Africa is now well known for), and it is not quite the co-working space that comes into your mind. Nonetheless, we knew that Maono was to be a dynamic space that provides community change makers like Community based organizations, social entrepreneurs, activists and others a place to meet, collaborate, share knowledge and build networks to achieve their objectives.

We are proud to say that we are steadily achieving this vision. Projects like these give us so much joy. They prove to us that when people come together, great things happen. But most importantly, they affirm to us that community based organisations (CBOS) are best placed to address a community’s needs. They are well informed about the needs of a community. When availed with adequate resources, CBOs will work more effectively and achieve better results.