Skip to main content

Our submission for the award under this category is premised on the success we have had through community action in initiating transformation of a populous local neighborhood in Nairobi (Dandora) and improve: the street life, personal safety, economic opportunities for the youth, better waste management, mitigation of urban decay and creation plus maintenance of new public spaces. Our intervention and practice entails an informal disaggregation of the neighborhood into cells known as courtyards. The youth and the residents living in those courtyards establish a youth group that is then given the responsibility for the regeneration and maintenance of the space within the courtyard and the adjacent public street. The residents then agree to pay a monthly fee to the appointed youth for the regeneration and maintenance. This creates sustainable jobs for the young people, provides the residents with a clean, safe and well-maintained courtyard and public street while creating a sense of ownership and civic duty for all the residents. This practice has in the last three years grown from five to over 120 courtyards across Dandora. Additionally, in order to stir the growth and entrenchment of this practice, DTL the CBO runs an annual competition, currently in its 3rd year where the youth groups compete to see which group’s intervention has had the highest impact in fostering safety, cleanliness and community cohesion. In between the annual competition, there is a quarterly courtyard grading applied to participating teams to ensure that the interventions are maintained throughout the year. After the success of this practice in Dandora, a number of groups interested in urban regeneration have now formed a network to scale up the intervention across Nairobi.


Dandora Transformation League (DTL)
P.O. Box 2487 – 00606 Nairobi Nairobi, 00606
esalimba@gmail.com
+254798985626