NextGenFem

Challenge

The vibrant feminist movement in Kenya faces many challenges. The discourse around women’s equality and rights doesn’t often reflect the realities of women from diverse racial, cultural, or socioeconomic backgrounds. Younger voices do not find themselves in the feminism narrative. Micro-segmentation has created factions within the movement. Short-lived campaign life cycles have resulted in short upticks of awareness, which do not connect to long-term societal change. At the same time, rights and policies continue to stagnate, which doesn’t lead toward greater systemic change. Feminists doing the work at the grassroots level typically don’t have the needed funding and visibility. 

There is a critical need to better listen to, identify the barriers, and map the system connections in order to design and define modern solutions and support in the ways that work for Kenya’s next generation of feminists.

Approach

NextGenFem used creativity, strategic planning, and co-design with young feminist activists to innovate faster ways toward the achievement of rights for a new generation of young women. We brought feminists together to learn the views of the new generation, identify their drivers, and map both the immediate and potential long-term needs across intersections. The project engaged, connected, and supported young feminists to drive awareness, demand, accountability, and implementation of their rights. After Kenya, we hope to add more countries.

Project results

The Kenya work resulted in a NextGenFem co-creation methodology and collaboration platform that drove exploration and innovation through collaborative planning that can be extended to other countries or group. We also produced the NextGenFem: Kenya report that outlines the barriers and issues, a roadmap, and a set of solutions to address the interconnected issues.  

NextGenFem is funded by Scope’s Social Innovation Fund.