Peace Mapping in Kenya: IGL Students Launch Sisi ni Amani

IGL Empower fellows Rachel Brown (Tufts 2010) and Cody Valdes (Tufts 2012) spent the summer launching Sisi ni Amani [We are Peace], a project to map and connect peace initiatives in Kenya. Brown and Valdes are co-founders of Sisi ni Amani, and will be staying on in Kenya to run the project for one to two years, at which point it will be handed over to local staff. During their summer months in Kenya, Rachel and Cody have made great strides on their way to launching Sisi ni Amani’s peace map and spent one month with Sisi ni Amani Media Manager Tegan Bukowski (Washington University, BA, 2010) leading workshops for youth in Kibera, perhaps Africa’s largest slum, to give them the digital media skills to photograph peace in their community.

About the Project 

Sisi ni Amani is a project that addresses the need to understand the community-level peace work that is being done in Kenya and to connect Kenyan peace leaders with one another to enhance their efforts. Sisi ni Amani leverages the high prevalence of mobile technology in Kenya by crowdsourcing information about Kenya's many diverse peace initiatives and organizations through mobile phones - enabling citizens to send SMS messages about peace activities in their communities - and visualizing these initiatives on an online map. The peace map will provide a powerful resource for Kenyan citizens and media outlets seeking to connect with and highlight the work of these peace leaders.

Sisi ni Amani then brings these peace leaders together for peace workshops held throughout the country, where participants can share vital skills and knowledge, create new relationships, and have informed discussions on issues of security and conflict early warning signs in their communities. These workshops will include informational sessions on using the peace-mapping platform, which will produce a trained network of trusted Peace- and Conflict Early Warning-Sign Reporters who can submit alerts via SMS and connect with national mediation networks in the event of future conflict. The project's efforts will at first focus on the greater Nairobi area before expanding to known hot spots for conflict throughout Kenya, such as the South Rift Valley, and eventually spread to national and regional levels.

Summer 2010

Brown and Valdes spent the summer forging partnerships with local organizations at the community and national levels and laying the groundwork for local Sisi ni Amani launches in areas that were highly effected by the 2007-2008 post-election violence. 

Over the summer, the Sisi ni Amani team solidified partnerships with multiple organizations to tap into their existing networks of peace leaders throughout Kenya, with the aim of mapping, understanding, and bringing together these diverse individuals and organizations through Sisi ni Amani’s peace workshops.

Additionally, Sisi ni Amani has advanced plans to train these peace leaders in the use of our SMS platform so that they can send Sisi ni Amani peace- and conflict early warning (CEWARN)-sign alerts in the event of future conflict or hostilities, information that can be forwarded to the appropriate peace-keeping authorities. Erecting networks of individuals throughout the country with their fingers on the pulses of community-level tensions is crucial to preventing and mitigating future conflict.

Finally, and most excitingly, Sisi ni Amani is currently bringing on board groups of dedicated and passionate students at first-class universities in the Nairobi area as Sisi ni Amani volunteers. Their role will be to map incoming reports, conduct follow-up interviews with peace leaders in different parts of the country, and spread the word of Sisi ni Amani through community outreach.

Sisi ni Amani’s is launching initially in Nairobi, focusing on four specific slums which were hot spots for violence in 2007-2008. Each of these slums is having its own Sisi ni Amani launch, the first of which took place in Baba Dogo slum on September 25th, and consisted of a musical caravan through each neighborhood in partnership with local organizations to spread the word for Baba Dogo residents to text Sisi ni Amani information about peace in their community.

After Nairobi, Sisi ni Amani will begin its launches in the Rift Valley, and area of high tensions. To accomplish all of this, we are currently making plans with a partner organization to launch a mini-Peace Caravan in the 2011 new year, which will bring us through known hot-spots for conflict throughout the South and Central Rift Valley in Kenya. This Peace Caravan will consist of two months of private dialogues, forums, workshops, and trainings with our network of Peace Leaders, and two weeks of a traveling 'Caravan,' which will include music, art, theater, and other public displays to promote dialogue and to encourage communities to text Sisi ni Amani about peace in their communities.

A Note on Kibera & Sisi ni Amani’s Photography Workshops – from Cody

In my short time in Kenya, I've found Kibera to be one of the most vibrant and cultured communities in Nairobi, and likely in Kenya on the whole. But the images that typically flow through the media from its muddy alleys and tin-shack edifices hardly portray it as such, instead reflecting the fleeting experiences of outsiders - and even many Kenyans - who sadly fail to incorporate local voices into the narratives they produce. Over the past three weeks, we've partnered with two local organizations to given three different groups of Kiberan youth, including the 10-15 year old youth from Hot Sun Foundation's Academy, our 5-8 year old girls at the Kibera School for Girls, and a small team of 19-23 year old photojournalists with Shining Hope for Communities, the opportunity to speak truth to their community and highlight the peace contained within it by taking their own pictures. The results have been jaw-dropping. I invite you to view the photography they've chosen to represent their community here on our PHOTO BLOG, and then to view two videos of our team working with the Hot Sun Films Academy youth HERE.

Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of the renowned Acumen Fund and author of the book, "The Blue Sweater," recently gave our kids a shout out on Twitter for their photography... See HERE for her tweet.

To learn more about Sisi ni Amani, or to donate, visit www.mappingpeace.org.