From April the 22nd to the 26th, the Generation Gender South Africa coalition, consisting of organizations such as Sonke Gender Justice, Action Aid South Africa, and Active! Change Drivers led various capacity strengthening workshops for youth in the KwaZulu Natal. The training’s objectives were to capacitate the civil society organizations and Generation Gender champions on social audits and equip them on how to make meaningful submissions and contributions on their municipal Integrated Development Plans with respect to addressing community and youth needs.
Over four days, the team conducted the social audit and Integrated Development Plan engagements. The first day revolved around strengthening the participants’ understanding of the social audit process, its purpose, and how it unravels. In the coming days, the training went on to engage its audience on how to be involved in the IDP process, how to make oral and written submissions to address needs and gaps within the framework and the significance of the youth’s participation in the IDP process. This training had evident connections to the actual social audit take-off that encompassed a two-day engagement with the local community where the participants conducted the audit. During the training, young people identified the issues affecting the lives of young people in all diversities.
Key highlights of the training included stakeholder mapping. This was aimed at skilling up young people and different actors in their communities to engage when they need to address issues of service delivery, ending gender-based violence, and keeping young people at the forefront of addressing these social issues. Young people are faced with many challenges such intimidation and dismissal when engaging community leaders, making it difficult to have their voices heard and their concerns addressed.
“It is without a doubt that equipping young people to meaningfully engage and hold duty bearers accountable to their promises on the fulfillment of the rights of the community is an ideal approach to ensuring sustainable change”, says Diana Macauley, RPN Co-Unit Manager at Sonke Gender Justice.
“These social audits and the IDP process have provided a platform for young people to meaningfully participate and represent driving change towards the prevention of gender-based violence and promoting social and gender justice. Witnessing this powerful process enlightened me to the passion that young people have, and how we need to support them to positively channel this, through the power of their voices towards social Justice”, Macauley concludes.
