This past Saturday, SNA-K’s Kamukunji chapter held a community forum for seventy community leaders in Baba Dogo and Korogocho. The forum followed two smaller forums of approximately twenty leaders each in Baba Dogo and Korogocho, which identified the major needs in each of the two communities. Saturday’s forum brought together leaders from both locations to prioritize the needs identified by category and specific issue to provide the baseline of information for a Community Needs Assessment that will be presented to political aspirants. This forum will be supplemented by SMS-based input from the community, and creates positive civic engagement through bringing community leaders across ethnic and religious lines together to agree upon shared goals. More information on the forum will follow, but for a preview, the top five priority areas identified were:
1. Security
2. Education
3. Good governance
4. Health care
5. Environment
Participants’ evaluations of the forum were positive, with all participants believing that the document produced would reflect the needs of their communities, and participants commenting that the forum was very useful, and that the conversation and sharing of views was one of the most valuable parts.