KENYA: What Does Inclusion Look Like in Underserved Communities?

In pursuit of inclusion, Kurui strives to bridge the gap between global initiatives and local realities.

Meaningful collaborations, flexibility in funding, and building trust have been identified as ways to correct biases and power imbalances that exclude grassroots organizations.

Decade after decade, the international community has come together to deliberate, share insights, advocate, and make resolutions to promote gender equality. But gaps are glaring in every gathering from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women to International Women’s Day celebrations. 

This year’s International Women’s Day theme was Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress. The whole month’s clarion call was to #InspireInclusion. Following the deliberations at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), it was apparent that inclusion is championed by most, if not everyone, in the women’s rights space.

The glaring gaps are being tracked down to women in underserved communities, especially in developing and least-developed countries. Statistics point toward the exclusion of grassroots organizations in global affairs, yet these organizations serve the target population, and most are run by women themselves.

People will point out that most funds don’t get to grassroots organizations but are channeled to bigger organizations with the hope that it will trickle down. Furthermore, there’s evidence of structural inequalities and biases against locally led organizations in a way that they’re deemed incompetent and too small to work on global issues. Yet, they’re proximal to the populations that need to be included in development to close the gaps. Aside from understanding the situation in the communities, local founders are women who also understand global affairs and can break them down to fit the local situation.

As part of a locally founded and grassroots-serving organization, Missing Third Project, I’m not surprised by this. Addressing issues at the grassroots level is far more complex than how they’re presented on paper. This is where the mismatch between donors and recipients at the grassroots arises.

At my organization, we address the gaps in women's leadership in communities and delve into the factors that lead to them. We do this through learning workshops in collaboration with local women's groups. In essence, we are supposed to deliver learning sessions and challenge the women to think and act on how they can be more involved in leadership.

The reality in the communities makes using workshops to engage the women difficult. In most cases, there are layers of issues that need to be addressed before talking about leadership, which, in essence, is a vague idea that’s difficult to apply to everyday life. Leadership as a concept often needs to be reflected on from a relatable perspective and incorporated into women's everyday lives to help them appreciate it.

When crafting proposals, it becomes difficult to incorporate some of the issues into the project, yet the communities need them addressed. This is how grassroots organizations miss out on funding and collaboration with donors.

Underserved communities still struggle with barriers that seem trivial in today’s world, but these are the real things that continue to exclude them from development. For example, addressing girl’s education cannot be done without confronting period poverty. Yet, the distribution of sanitary supplies is seen as something that shouldn’t be included in a proposal for leadership training for girls.

Sadly, communities can’t sit in a workshop all day to listen to leadership lessons if their girls miss school for lack of sanitary supplies. The long-term ripple effect of missing education opportunities is that women cannot take part in most decision-making initiatives and take up leadership positions. The privilege of getting a higher-level education has placed many women in leadership positions.

Investing in women at the grassroots starts with small matters and then gradually moves to more complex areas. The glaring gaps hindering inclusion don’t get the attention of big global charities and funding organizations. Yet, they keep arising in plenary discussions, with everyone wondering why they've never been solved.

Meaningful collaborations, flexibility in funding, and building trust have been identified as ways to correct biases and power imbalances that exclude grassroots organizations. These include allowing donors to see sense in the complexities of grassroots communities’ needs and giving organizations opportunities to share real-time information with funders on their work with communities.

Most grassroots communities are facing the real challenges of the digital divide. Since information flows increasingly on digital media, they continue to miss out on global affairs. Without visibility, donors and other supporters cannot recognize and acknowledge their work. This is a vicious cycle that grassroots organizations and communities face.

Investing in digital technologies can give grassroots organizations and the communities they serve greater visibility, enabling them to receive and share information with global audiences. Such an intervention can also bridge the gaps in the availability of data from grassroots communities that could inform decisions by development partners.

Our organization continues to inspire inclusion by walking with underserved communities one step at a time, breaking a barrier in each step. Our work will continually incorporate learning with practical solutions to eliminate the barriers women in the communities encounter as they work toward achieving equality.

We are also using participatory approaches to learn from the women about the nuances of their communities, then linking them to global affairs to craft actionable and relatable solutions. Women from underserved communities must understand and relate to global trends to contribute meaningfully to development.

Inspiring inclusion is a long-term journey for those in the development space. This will also require lots of flexibility to fit into the complex and dynamic nature of different communities and the changes that occur with time.

Numbers don’t lie, but if they aren’t matched with real people and situations, we will continue to wonder why, after years of action and billions of dollars invested in stopping inequalities, very little seems to change.

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