Kenya Web Based Activism
Throught the GV Rising Voices Group I got to know the Mars Group, a leadership, governance, accountability and media watchdog organization based in Kenya.
“Our goal is to create awareness and to generate an effective demand, by Kenyans, for accountability from Kenya’s leadership and to encourage Kenyans to hold to account those who have committed improprieties.”
Among the many different activities, the group actively work reporting news on Governament and corruption, live streaming videos on their own frequent reports and promoting citizens partecipation. At the moment they claim having more than 170000 change activists on the ground. They also have a blog on which they openly report on all their initiatives.
One of the latest succesfull initiative is about exposing fraud in a supplementary budget tabled in parliament, and after being lambasted by the Minister of Finance itself, a joint parliamentary committee confirmed the Mars Group work stating the existence of financial inconsistencies in governament planning.
One of the greatest project launched by Mars Group is Partnership For Change, a Web Based, ongoing citizen participation initiative that aims to
“advance the strategic use of non-violent action in calling upon the Kenyan Citizen to demand the end of Impunity, Restore Democratic accountability and to end Dictatorship in Kenya.”
The project is a true and concrete Call to action, spreading forms on non-violent protests, advocacy material and much more, aiming to collect people and push em to actively volunteer for the campaign. This is the Facebook group of the project.
Great job guys.
UPDATE: It seems that lambasting the activists wasn’t enough. Lately there have been 3 suspected deaths among Kenya’s web activists, and now it seems that some of them keep being threatened and even searched for direct elimination.