Overcoming Power Deficit

Since the occurrence of the French revolution a multiplicity of social movements have tried to transform their societies. While some movements such as the civic rights movements and more recently the Arab spring have been extremely successful, many social movements rarely achieve their intended objectives. Between the year 2011 to 2015 World Vision Kenya implemented a youth empowerment project dabbed Yes Youth Can! Nyanza. One of the main objectives of this project was to bring youth together for purposes of interest aggregation and articulation at both local,County and national policy platforms. Within the four years of the project implementation, the youth were able to establish a youth assembly in 7ooo villages across Nyanza region, leverage resources from various partners for purposes of business finance,support half a million people to acquire national identification cards and help their members to get jobs in the county governments. The level of success was however variety from one county to the other. The variation was largely determined by the to which the youth groups (bunges) identify and utilize political opportunities in their environment