May 25, 2017

Bahati: a great start to the scale up marathon.

Following the success we had in Lanet Umoja location, where we worked with Chief Kariuki, our scale up process officially kicked off today as we have started a marathon series of introductory sessions in four locations – Bahati, Kirima, Githioro and Mereroni.

Our first stop is in Bahati location in the Northern part of Nakuru North Sub-county. This location is comprised of three sub-locations: Biblioni (mainly large scale farms in which grow wheat and vegetables in tens and hundreds of acres – a few farm owners and many workers), Chania (an area of small-holder farmers, many of whom are older) and Bahati (the more peri-urban and metropolitan sub-location).

Approximately 50 leaders who were in attendance, comprised of youth leaders, security committee leaders, religious leaders, Nyumba Kumi leaders and plot owners/ cluster leaders etc.

Upon arrival at the ACK church, where the meeting was to be held, we found the place a bee-hive of activity, with local women preparing lunch for the participants, community leaders were setting up the room and the chiefs were busy on their phones calling upon the community leaders who had not arrived to hurry.

At this early stage, we are careful not to overload them with a lot of information. The purpose of this initial series of meetings in the four locations, starting with today’s in Bahati, is to set expectations of the process that is ahead of us. We focused on the question why – why should they care about the SDGs or Data? Why should they invest their time and effort to understand these global concepts and later even collect data?

“The first rule is to know,” said Al Kags as he took them through the session, talking about their civic rights and responsibilities, the value of following up with government and the value of data in their lives.

We are excited that in Bahati our team was welcomed enthusiastically and that the community committed to be dedicated to the process.

“We shall even do better than Lanet! Said anna Anne Njeri, a community leader.

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