The DTM media team was recently at the Urban Thinkers Campus held at the UN-Habitat headquarters in the United Nation Complex in Gigiri as part of its CSO capacity building innovations.
 

In this event, DTM was supporting one of its partners, Polycom Development Project (PDP) which had been selected by UN Habitat to take lead in collecting views and suggestions from Kenyans on the City we need and to ensure that such a city would be is safe for Women and Girls.
 

Jane Anyango Odongo Director, Polycom Development Project addresses the meeting

This event took place from 15 to 16 October 2015 under the Urban Thinkers Campus, which is part of the World Urban Campaign Process towards habitat 3.
 

The Urban Thinkers Campus is an initiative of UN-Habitat conceived as an open space for critical exchange between urban researchers, professionals, and decision makers who believe that urbanization is an opportunity and can lead to a positive transformation. It is also intended as a platform to build consensus between partners engaged in addressing urbanization challenges and giving solutions for the future.
 

Jane Anyango Odongo Director, Polycom Development Project with the meeting’s facilitator

The aim of this session was to focus on how Safety, Sanitation, and Services to the urban communities, can be planned to promote sustainable peace for women and girls. This is given that previous planning on sanitation and other services have exposed women and girls to danger instead of enhancing their safety.
 

This campus brought both primary and secondary stakeholders together to discuss how they can join efforts to ensure that the different services including but not limited to sanitation does not expose them to danger but rather promote their safety.
 

The meeting ended with a proposal to address a raft of issues before the next forum. Among these issues were:

The youth need to organize themselves to make gains like women. It was pointed out that for the youth to have their issues well articulated, they need to come up with innovative strategies to address their needs.
 

Citizens need to continuously demand for accountability from their leaders and sustain it. By doing this their leaders will be on their toes and hence citizens will get better service delivery and governance.
 

Women to come up with models such as the Wamama Tunauwezo Model to ensure that as many women as possible are reached and also to ensure that information is disseminated to the women at the grassroots. With such a model women are able to participate actively and effectively in governance and in key development issues.
 

For more information please visit the PDP website

View more photos from the event below. Please note, these images are for non-commercial use only.