From Participation to Agency: ETCO at the SAIIA Youth Programming Innovation Lab
Last week, ETCO – Empower The Community was represented at the SAIIA Youth Programming Innovation Lab (YPIL) at the Radisson Blu Nairobi Arboretum — five days that brought together youth-focused organisations, researchers, and practitioners from across Africa.
The Lab is part of a larger IDRC-funded project, Youth Shaping Africa's Present and Future: Insights from Youth Programming Across Africa, run by a consortium of SAIIA, Positive Agenda Advisory, and Université Alassane Ouattara. Its purpose: to examine the systems that shape youth programming across the continent, and the conditions under which young people gain real influence over the decisions that affect them.
Participation vs. agency
The framing that shaped the whole week was a distinction SAIIA itself has been pushing: the difference between youth participation and youth agency. Being invited into a room is not the same as holding real decision-making power. Too often, organisations ask young people to contribute to discussion without giving them a genuine role in shaping outcomes.
At ETCO, this isn't an abstract debate. It's how we already operate.
Nine programmes, youth-designed
ETCO runs nine programmes in Kibera, Nairobi — feeding, education sponsorship, a computer centre, sports, arts, business empowerment, and Eco Community, our environmental stewardship initiative tackling Kibera's solid waste crisis. Each one is designed and delivered by the young people it serves, not simply staffed by them.
Eco Community in particular sits close to the Lab's own themes of systems change: only an estimated 33% of waste in Kibera is currently collected, leaving roughly 2,690 tons uncollected annually, flowing into the Ngong Rivers and ultimately Nairobi Dam. Our clean-up work is a direct, youth-led response to that gap.
An honest word on capacity
Being a fully volunteer-run organisation is a strength — it means near-total efficiency, since almost every shilling raised goes directly to programmes, and it builds deep trust within the community we serve. But it's also a real constraint: our volunteers hold down their own jobs and responsibilities alongside their work at ETCO, which caps how much we can build and how fast.
We are actively fundraising to build administrative capacity and bring on paid staff — not to replace the volunteer model, but to sustain and grow it. This directly creates jobs through programmes like Eco Community, turning volunteer energy into paid, dignified work for young people in Kibra.
This is exactly the kind of core-support gap the Lab's own funders and partners are trying to address: short project cycles rarely fund the unglamorous administrative backbone that lets grassroots organisations scale sustainably.
What we're taking forward
The policy dialogue that closed the week brought together Lab participants, youth programming practitioners, funders, and policymakers. Three points from ETCO's side carried through:
- Grassroots organisations are infrastructure, not beneficiaries. Volunteer-run community organisations deliver youth programming at a cost and trust level no external programme can match.
- Evidence from local organizations matters.
- Funders should shift from short project cycles to flexible core support — and include grassroots practitioners in research design from day one, not as an afterthought.
We're grateful to SAIIA, Positive Agenda Advisory, Université Alassane Ouattara, and IDRC for convening this space, and to the practitioners from across the continent who made the week worthwhile.
Creating Impact, Building a Better Tomorrow
At ETCO, we're committed to creating lasting positive impact by keeping our environment safe and clean while creating meaningful employment opportunities for our communities. Through innovation and strategic partnerships with like-minded stakeholders, we're working together to achieve shared goals that drive sustainable development. We're also conducting a comprehensive economic survey to better understand the project's returns, impact, and scalability—ensuring every step we take is informed, effective, and built for long-term success.
Planning Meeting with PSN - Waste Management Project
Today's ETCO had logistical planning meeting at PSN Office to discuss the upcoming waste management project... Good things take time.
ETCO Office Under Repair & Setup
We're working on improving our office to better serve our community. Once complete, the upgraded space will help us provide more efficient, organized, and accessible services. Thank you for your patience and continued support as we build a better environment for everyone. Stay tuned for updates!