The Youth Baraza Project

The Youth Baraza is a project under Mazungumzo. “Baraza” is a Kiswahili word meaning a public meeting(s) that is used as a platform for creating awareness and responding to issues affecting a given community. In the Mazungumzo community, Youth barazas are community meetings organized with the spirit of promoting dialogue for social transformation, peaceful conflict resolution and encouraging young people to live productive lives. The Youth Baraza has continually provided a physical and virtual platform for its members to have conversations on the issues that affect society i.e. through zoom meetings and twitter spaces. The topics for these discussions are carefully crafted in line with society’s needs at a particular time. The panelists and guest speakers in these barazas are also selected basing on their expertise, knowledge and experience in a particular topic subject to discussion.

In the recent past, we have organized barazas with different topics that address diverse issues such as; Affirmative Action, Disability Rights, LGBT Rights, the Political climate of Uganda during the election period and the socio-economic impact of Covid-19 among others. These young people meet and have these important conversations which help them learn, unlearn/relearn new things about the societies they leave in. Through voicing their concerns in a manner of dialogue, the participants are initiated into the idea of peaceful conflict resolution as a tool of peace and community building. We aim at having more physical barazas in the future as they tend to be more interactive and impactful as compared to the virtual barazas.

Within the Youth baraza program, we have had the Way forwarders barazas, twitter(X”) spaces called ‘Mazungumzo talks’ and community debates