Jaslika's Inaugural Activity Report
Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Jaslika Activity Report. The Activity Report will be published online every quarter. We hope to use this as a channel to keep you updated on news, events, or other information about Jaslika, sharing with you key learnings from groundbreaking research undertaken by us; our thoughts, ideas, and partnerships; our successes and challenges.
In this issue
A little bit of history - the evolution of Jaslika from an idea to a brand
Deconstructing the brand
How not to reinvent the wheel - amplifying voices, sharing knowledge
The power of connections
Coming up next
A little bit of history
First, a little bit of history for context. Initially conceived as a business name in 2012, Jaslika became operational after its registration in December 2015 as Jaslika Holdings Limited. Today, the Jaslika brand boasts of Jaslika Consulting and Modus Design Lab, both operating under the holdings company, and Jaslika Foundation, a non-profit. Increasingly recognised as thought leaders in the areas of gender, youth participation, education, values and rights, our activities continue to encompass knowledge building, sharing, learning and reflection. Mentoring is integrated in all we do - in a seamless kind of way- by recognising Jaslika Youth as an essential component of our structure, and active participants in our programmes and activities. Our approach, rooted in the African concepts of ubuntu, holism, and the pedagogical principles of participatory learning, stands out from others in our emphasis on values, critical thinking, and a learning culture. Yes, technical, employable skills are important but we firmly believe that they must go hand in hand with such positive values as integrity, respect, tolerance - which we define as ‘the need to cultivate peaceful co-existence’, and a strong sense of social justice . We envision a world where each and every person has the right to thrive in environments that nurture their holistic development, unleash their full potential and safeguard their rights to quality education, health, protection and freedom of expression.
Knowing the ingredients, deconstructing the brand
‘So what is it that Jaslika does, programmatically speaking?’ We explored this seemingly simple but complex question at a hybrid workshop convened on February 27-28, 2024, attended by Jaslika associates, youth members and staff. A thematic analysis of the projects undertaken over the past eight years helped to identify our niche and deconstruct our brand into four distinct but interlinked programme areas. We packaged them as ‘sufurias’ (the traditional African ‘cooking pots’), with individual projects and activities as the ingredients:
Gender, Inclusion and Rights, includes projects relating to girls’ education and empowerment, gender equality, vulnerable and minority rights, children in the justice system, adolescent sexual and reproductive health.
Intergenerational Dialogue, consisting of community and policy dialogues that actively involve children and adolescents, and young people under the ages of 18-35.
Values and Ethics, focusing on civic and voter education, value-based education, global citizenship, psychosocial life skills education.
Environment and Indigenous Knowledge, spotlighting women’s indigenous knowledge, pre-colonial African education, education for sustainable development.
In addition, we visualise the following two cross-cutting thematic areas as the fuels that power the ‘cooking’ process:
Innovative Research Methods, for example, positive deviance approach, action research, creative participatory data collection and dissemination methods like learning circles, theatre for change, community dialogues, intersectional conceptual framework and analysis.
Mentoring, using intergenerational approaches.
Still in progress, we expect to refine our programme framework further during the next quarter.
How not to reinvent the wheel: amplifying voices, sharing knowledge
Recognition of researchers (particularly women) from the Global South, in knowledge production, is embedded in Jaslika’s DNA. We believe it to be a matter of epistemic and cognitive justice, as well as intellectual honesty and ethics. Though there has been a push in recent years to decolonise knowledge and recognise the heterogeneity of ‘knowledges’, the hegemony of the Global North, in defining and producing ‘scientific’ and ‘objective’ knowledge, persists. It is reflected in the muting of voices and the invisibility of insights from the Global South, especially in the decades before the digital explosion. Groundbreaking research and innovative methodologies, rooted in local realities, continue to be ignored and undervalued, as testified by inadequate investment in the dissemination of Southern-led studies. Research reports by Southern researchers tend to stay hidden in the offices of those who control the purse strings (usually those from the Global North). Access is frustrated by exclusive copyrights, non-disclosure agreements and paywalled journals that the average researcher, primarily those unaffiliated to any institution in our part of the world, could not (and cannot) simply afford. When our thoughts and ideas do make their way back into the mainstream discourse, they do so as ‘reinvented wheels’, often without due attribution. At the very least, ‘reinventing wheels’ is a waste of scarce resources and obstructs progress.
The research study on Creating impact at the local level for girls: Learning from girls’ education interventions in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda delved into the past, searching for ‘fugitive’ literature and drawing on the lived experiences of researchers in the 1990s to establish what the education situation was for girls in the early years, when the term ‘girl-child’ first appeared in the global development agenda. Comparison of these findings with the current emerging issues and trends revealed striking similarities, prompting the question: ‘So what has changed?’ For example, then as now, there are relatively more girls who drop out of school than boys ; fewer girls than boys complete secondary education; in some districts more boys enrolled in primary schools as at present; there was pushback against the girl-child and her education and empowerment, as there is now; gender and sexual violence persist in and around schools, with girls continuing to bear the greater brunt; school infrastructure and facilities remain girl-unfriendly and disability unfriendly; females are marginalised in educational leadership especially at the school level. The writing on the wall is clear; we are reinventing the wheel. We are also continuing to treat the symptoms of the problem, such as teen pregnancy, child marriage, FGM, sexual and gender-based violence, as well as gender discriminatory practices both in and outside the classroom, while the underlying causes remain unaddressed. The report proposes a conceptual framework to identify and analyse the deep-rooted barriers, arguing for consideration of the impact of intersecting factors linked to the politics of development, poverty and patriarchy, with humanitarian crises aggravating the problems.
Completed in 2023, the study was disseminated at a 3-day conference convened in partnership with RELI Africa. Held between April 16th-18th, 2024, the conference attracted over 120 stakeholders from Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. It was opened by the Hon. Beatrice Elachi, a Kenyan Parliamentarian, who is also an outspoken advocate of women and girls’ rights. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Kenya, Hon Martha Koome represented by the Hon Njoki Ndungu, a judge of the Supreme Court, officially launched the research findings, packaged into four knowledge products by Jaslika. Here is the link to a synopsis of the study presented at the launch by the Jaslika Director.
The power of connections
On February 27th, 2024, we were privileged to have Laura Keihas from Humak University (Finland) talk to us on Using Art Therapy for Mental Health Support, She presented at a hybrid session, generating lively discussions. Mental health was identified by young people (below the age of 25) from the Nairobi informal settlements, Tetu and Kieni sub-counties in Nyeri, in collaboration with Jaslika Youth, as what is lacking in the education system. It forms part of their 7-point agenda, presented to policy makers in a virtual intergenerational policy dialogue on September 15th, 2021, (watch it on YouTube here Jaslika Intergenerational Policy Dialogue Roundtable). The Young People’s Agenda and the Policy Dialogue were the culmination of Phase 1 of an action research. We describe it as Intergenerational Perspectives (in short, Intergen). Intergen2, building on the first phase, involved young people innovatively as the bridge between home/community and the school, extending beyond Nyeri to Yatta in Machakos county (part of the Nairobi greater metropolitan area).
In mid-March, 2024, a meeting of a reconstituted Project Advisory Committee (PAC), was also convened, to provide strategic guidance to the Intergen3 project implementation. The PAC is a collaborative forum for more in-depth discussions of key study issues, concerns and solutions with partners, mainly at the national level. Ms Mary Kangethe, Kenya National Commission to UNESCO (UNESCO KNATCOM) and Dr Josephine S. Etenyi, representing the State Department of Youth Affairs, Creative Economy and Sports, are co-chairs of the committee. Other PAC members are Ms Jedida Rutere from the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT); Ms Lucy Nderitu, Headteacher, Our Lady of Victory Primary School, Yatta; Ms Sophia Yeiga, Women Educational Researchers of Kenya (WERK); Mr Martin Kisilu, Kenya Education Management Institute (KEMI); Dr Changu Mannathoko, an International Gender, Education and Equality Expert. Others on the PAC are Jaslika members Ms Mary Muito and Mr Conrad Watola,with Faith Beth Kiboi representing Jaslika Youth from Nyeri county.
Also during the first quarter, we were visible in various partner-initiated activities:
We listened to researchers sharing research results - Dr Anil Khamis and his team from the Aga Khan University Institute of Human Development on children’s socio-emotional development, having a positive impact on their academic outcomes; EGER Kenya study results by Dr Eva Muluve and her colleagues from the Population Council EGER; Dr Mary Otieno and her colleagues on lessons learnt from the research on centering young people as agents of change in the Karamojong cluster of Kenya and Uganda, co-organised by the Brookings Center for Universal Education and the Learning and Action Alliance for Girls’ Agency; and Dr Emmanuel Manyasa of the USAWA Agenda presenting their latest report: Is our secondary school system unjust by design?
Alongside experts from the African region, Jaslika was privileged to support AfECN by peer reviewing the draft of GPE KIX Early Learning Knowledge Synthesis Draft Technical Report commissioned by them; and abstracts of papers for the East Africa ECD Conference 2024. In another AfECN initiated convening, we co-created the ECD CoPEA (Early Childhood Development Community Practice in East Africa) platform, together with selected partners from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia,
We also engaged in policy review and advocacy, collaborating with like-minded individuals and organisations through the Global Action Week for Education, organised by the Elimu Yetu Coalition (EYC). World Vision Kenya hosted a learning session on interventions by Kenyan Parliamentarians on the provision of meals in schools; and lastly, a joint submission by Dr Sheila Wamahiu and Dr Celestine Musembi of the Law Faculty, University of Nairobi, to the Kenyan Senate on Care and Protection of Child Parents Bill, through the Law Society of Kenya.
Coming up next
Dissemination remains a top priority for Jaslika in the second and third quarters of 2024. During 2021-2023, we developed an intergenerational dialogue replication model based on an action research, supported by Porticus. In the first quarter, we prepared the building blocks, (plans, personnel and materials), and identified networks, in readiness for dissemination of the study results and replication model. In addition, we are working on a policy brief on teen pregnancies that includes re-entry guidelines for pregnant girls/child mothers in Kenya, alongside other blog posts around the 7-point youth agenda.
Discussions are underway on what channels to use to disseminate the findings of post-election research to inform pre-2027 election reforms, undertaken by the Consortium of Election Research and Advocacy (CERA), of which Jaslika is a member. Jaslika led the thematic area, focusing on the engagement of Special Interest Groups (youth, women and people with disabilities), in the 2022 elections.
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