Stories From the Ground

Why Governance Matters at the Community Level

Governance is often spoken about in the language of parliaments, policies, and institutions. But for millions of Kenyans, governance is experienced much closer to home — in how resources are shared, in whether every voice gets heard, and in who gets to make decisions that affect the entire community.

In Samburu County, where communities have long navigated complex relationships with land, water, and shared resources, local governance has always mattered deeply. Yet for many years, community members — particularly elders, women, and youth — have felt excluded from the decisions that shape their lives. Resources have been mismanaged. Voices have gone unheard. Decisions have been made without the people most affected.

Thrive Alliance Initiative believes this must change. Through our Community Engagement Forums on Governance, we are working across Samburu to put decision-making power back where it belongs: in the hands of the people.

What Are Community Engagement Forums?

Community Engagement Forums are structured gatherings organised by Thrive Alliance Initiative in villages and settlements across Samburu. They bring together community members — elders, youth, women, local leaders, and ordinary residents — to discuss, debate, and decide on matters that affect their collective wellbeing.

The forums focus on three key pillars:

• Participatory Budgeting — empowering communities to have a direct say in how local resources and funds are allocated.
• Community-Driven Resource Management — training communities to manage shared resources — water, land, and community assets — transparently and sustainably.
• Governance Training for Elders and Leaders — equipping traditional leaders with knowledge on inclusive governance, accountability, and the importance of respecting every community member's voice.

The goal is not to replace traditional structures but to strengthen them — to blend the wisdom of community elders with the principles of transparent, inclusive, and accountable governance.

Participatory Budgeting: Communities Deciding Their Own Priorities

One of the most transformative aspects of our forums is participatory budgeting — a process that allows community members to directly identify priorities and decide how available resources should be used.

In many communities, budgets are decided by a few individuals at the top, leaving residents with no knowledge of how money is spent or why. Participatory budgeting changes this. Every community member — from the eldest to the youngest adult — gets to speak, propose, and vote on what matters most.

Through our forums in Turkana, communities have used participatory budgeting processes to prioritise access to clean water, school infrastructure, healthcare outreach, and drought response resources — decisions that reflect the real and lived needs of the people, not assumptions made from outside.

Community-Driven Resource Management

Turkana is a county rich in both natural resources and cultural knowledge. Yet resource mismanagement — driven by poor governance, conflict, and lack of transparent systems — has historically undermined community wellbeing.

Our forums introduce communities to practical frameworks for managing shared resources collectively. This includes establishing community resource committees, setting transparent rules for resource use, creating accountability mechanisms, and building conflict resolution skills rooted in local culture.

When communities manage their own resources with clear rules and shared accountability, outcomes improve dramatically. Boreholes are maintained. Grazing land is protected. Community funds are spent where they are needed most.

Training Elders: Governance Rooted in Respect

In Turkana culture, elders hold immense moral authority. Their guidance shapes community decisions, resolves disputes, and preserves social order. Thrive Alliance Initiative deeply respects this. Our governance training is not designed to sideline elders — it is designed to work with them.

Our elder governance training sessions focus on the importance of inclusive decision-making — ensuring that women, youth, and minority voices are heard and respected alongside traditional leadership. We explore how the best decisions are made when all perspectives are considered, and how inclusive governance strengthens rather than weakens community authority.

The training also addresses accountability — how leaders can be transparent about decisions and resources, and how communities can hold their leaders to account without conflict or division.

A Community Left Waiting

In Natiir village, Turkana, decisions used to happen in a particular way. The elders would gather, words would be spoken, and the rest of the community — including younger men, women, and residents with less traditional standing — would wait to hear what had been decided.

For James Lokitela, a community member with deep roots in Natiir, this felt deeply familiar. He had grown up watching important decisions being made without him. He had learned, over time, not to expect to be asked.

That began to change when Thrive Alliance Initiative brought its Community Engagement Forum to Natiir.

A Community Forum Like No Other

James attended the first forum with cautious curiosity. He had been to community meetings before, but they had rarely felt like places where someone like him — not an elder, not a chief, not a government official — was truly expected to contribute.

What he found was different. The Thrive Alliance Initiative facilitators opened the forum with a simple but powerful principle: every person in the room had a voice, and every voice would be heard. The agenda was not set by a single leader. It was built together, by the community, to reflect what the community actually needed.

The topic that day was participatory budgeting — how the village would allocate the limited resources available for community development. Water access, a community store, repairs to a local school structure. Every option was discussed openly. Every resident was invited to speak.

The Training That Changed How Natiir Leads

As the forums continued in Natiir, elders were invited to dedicated governance training sessions facilitated by Thrive Alliance Initiative. These sessions were designed with deep respect for Turkana traditional authority — but they also introduced new ideas about inclusive leadership.

The elders learned about the importance of community-driven resource management — how shared decisions on water points, grazing areas, and community assets lead to better outcomes and less conflict. They discussed what it means to respect every community member's voice, regardless of age, gender, or status.

James, who attended sessions alongside the elders as a community representative, watched something remarkable happen. Men who had led for decades began to listen differently. They began to ask questions they had never thought to ask before: What do the women think? What do the young people need?

Community-Driven Decisions, Real Results

The participatory budgeting process in Natiir led to a community-agreed decision to prioritise the repair and management of the local water point — a resource that affected every household, but that had previously been managed by a handful of individuals with little transparency.

A community resource committee was formed, with members drawn from different groups: elders, women, and youth. Clear rules were set, roles were assigned, and the community had a system it had built and agreed to together.

For James, the change was profound — not just in what was decided, but in how decisions were made. He became an active participant in subsequent forums, and began encouraging other community members — especially younger residents — to attend and speak up.

Good Governance Begins With Inclusion

James Lokitela's story is one of many unfolding across Turkana through Thrive Alliance Initiative's Community Engagement Forums. It is a story about what happens when ordinary people are treated as the rightful architects of their own communities.

Governance is not a distant concept. It happens every day — in the decisions made at the water point, in how elders listen, in whether a young person feels their voice counts. Thrive Alliance Initiative is committed to making sure those everyday acts of governance are fair, inclusive, and grounded in the dignity of every community member.

Because when communities govern themselves well, everything else — resources, livelihoods, futures — becomes possible.

A Girl Who Dared to Dream Differently

Scholar Lomwa grew up in a settlement on the outskirts of Samburu County, where girls were expected to follow a familiar path: school for as long as the family could afford, then marriage, then the quiet invisibility that comes with a life defined by others' decisions.

Scholar had a different idea. She was the kind of girl who asked too many questions in class, who stayed late to argue about history and rights and what the constitution actually meant for people in her community. When Thrive Alliance Initiative first came to her settlement to run a Community Engagement Forum, Scholar was in secondary school. She attended on her own initiative, sitting at the back of the room, listening and learning. What she witnessed that day set the course of the rest of her life.

Discovering That Governance Is for Everyone

The forum that Scholar attended was focused on participatory budgeting and resource management. She watched elders debate openly with women and youth. She heard a facilitator explain that governance was not just for government — it was for every member of a community who had a stake in its future.

From Participant to Leader

Scholar went on to study Community Development at a regional college, supported by a bursary programme and the encouragement of Thrive Alliance Initiative facilitators who recognised her talent and drive. She returned to Samburu with a diploma, a notebook full of ideas, and an unshakeable conviction that her community needed more young people at the governance table.

She applied to join Thrive Alliance Initiative as a Youth Governance Champion — a role that involves facilitating youth-focused sessions within Community Engagement Forums, training peer educators on participatory processes, and acting as a bridge between the concerns of young people and the decisions of community leaders.

In her first year, Scholar facilitated twelve youth governance workshops across three settlements, reaching over 340 young people — many of whom had never attended a forum or imagined their voices could carry weight in decisions affecting their communities.

Building Bridges Between Generations

One of Scholar's most important contributions has been helping bridge the gap between elder governance structures and the aspirations of younger community members. Where tensions existed — between tradition and change, between authority and inclusion — Scholar has worked patiently and respectfully to find common ground.

She designs forums where elders and youth sit together, where questions are asked across generations, and where decisions are made by consensus rather than authority. She has helped communities establish Youth Resource Committees that work alongside elder-led structures, ensuring that future planning includes the perspectives of those who will inherit the results.

A Community That Is Learning to Lead Itself

The settlements where Scholar works are changing. Youth attendance at Community Engagement Forums has increased. Young women are joining resource committees. School-aged children are learning about participatory governance in youth forums that Scholar has helped design.

And in Samburu, a girl who once sat quietly at the back of a room is now the person standing at the front — not because she was given power, but because she claimed it, built it, and is now sharing it with the next generation.

Thrive Alliance Initiative: Investing in Young Leaders

Thrive Alliance Initiative is committed to ensuring that youth across Samburu and Turkana are not just beneficiaries of community governance — they are its architects. Through our Youth Governance Champion programme, we are training a new generation of community leaders who carry the values of inclusion, accountability, and participatory decision-making into every space they enter.